OKEX Suspends Withdrawals Led To Price Drop Of BTC and OKB

 Asia’s top crypto exchange OKEx has suddenly announced the suspension of withdrawals in order to cooperate with an investigation.

OKEx announced that withdrawals are suspended because one of the holders of its private keys is “currently cooperating with a public security bureau” with regard to ongoing “investigations.”

The exchange stated that it has been “out of touch” with said key-holder, preventing the exchange from being able to complete the "associated authorization" request. OKEx will resume the withdrawals of digital assets “immediately” once the key-holder “is able to authorize the transaction.”

OKEx said that customers' assets will not be harmed by the events and its security will be maintained.

This news has led to the fall of Bitcoin (BTC) by 3% while OKEx’s native token OKB has crashed 15%.

One of the Beijing based reporters, Colin Wu, written on his WeChat public account that an "OTC merchant on OKEx had mistakenly received 500,000 CNY from the fraud group and was hunted by the police across the provinces."

He also states that the investigation may be related to money laundering: "The Chinese government is cracking down on money laundering using cryptocurrency for telecom fraud, and centralized exchanges are in a very dangerous state."

However, the information given by Wu is still unverified.