OKEx, one of the leading exchanges mopping up the incredible demand for crypto trades in Asia, sees significant movement of funds from its wallets. Such a move could be a technicality, the need to send coins to another address. But the events sparked speculations of a possible hack.
https://twitter.com/DraconianRang/status/1169170258617352197
But other sources pointed to a scheduled maintenance for the exchange:
https://twitter.com/JayHao8/status/1169169982820769792
OKEx is one of the largest exchanges, competing with BINANCE for volumes. The exchange carried close to $1 billion in trades as of September 4, on 449 trading pairs. Still, the BTC/USDT pair is one of the busiest, causing 44% of the activity on the exchange. OKEx is also one of the most active carriers of Tether (USDT), with high importance for BTC price discovery.
OKEx also showed the highest returns on its token sales, or IEOs, further attracting attention to itself. As one of the leaders in the crypto space, OKEx is also the target of scammers, especially related to its token accelerator program, OKEx Jumpstart. The market operator warned of a recent fraud making the rounds:
https://twitter.com/OKEx/status/1169175817374617602
Exchange hacks are still one of the most worrying events in the cryptocurrency space. Exchanges have increased their security, though hot wallets may still be vulnerable. Unauthorized withdrawals or other forms of fraud may also empty exchange wallets.
However, most often, the movement of large sums is the exchange establishing new storage or cold wallets.
OKEx is also boosting the presence of its own fully-backed, audited stablecoin, with the third audit report in a row:
https://twitter.com/OKEx/status/1168744041686585345
In the past, OKEx lost $3 million’s equivalent of BTC, though not as an attack against wallets. So far, the exchange itself has not been attacked, but user accounts have been improperly emptied of coins due to low personal security. The latest attack against the market operator happened in the fall of 2017.
