OKEx Suspends Withdrawals, Says Key Holder Not Available Due to Cooperation With Investigation

• Most of the top cryptocurrencies sold off on the news, with the price of bitcoin on OKEx dropping 3% in 30 minutes, touching $11,182 Friday morning, before starting to rebound to $11,300 at last check.
• The key holder's being out of touch prevented withdrawal authorization from being completed, the exchange wrote in a notice published early Friday morning.
• Hours before the announcement, significant withdrawals of ether, tron and bitcoin were completed from known OKEx-affiliated addresses, as picked up by on-chain transaction monitoring service Whale Alert.
• The exchange did not immediately respond to CoinDesk's request for comment.
• "OKEx’s other functions remain normal and stable and the security of your assets at OKEx will not affected," the notice read. "We will resume digital assets/cryptocurrencies withdrawals immediately once the concerned private key holder is able to authorize the transaction."
• OKEx CEO Jay Hao claimed the key holder's cooperation with officials was due to a "personal issue" and the investigation would not affect the business, according to a Weibo post.
• Taking to Twitter, Hao indicated that non-crypto withdrawals should still be processing, claiming that all non-crypto or digital asset operations were unaffected.
• The Malta-based exchange is the second-largest cryptocurrency derivatives platform by 24-hour volume, according to Skew.

Update (Oct. 16, 4:50 UTC): This article has been updated with information about coin withdrawals, price of bitcoin.

Update (Oct. 16, 6:12 UTC): This article has been updated with public statements from CEO Jay Hao.