Huobi Guarantees Normal Operations During OKEx's Suspension of Crypto Withdrawals

Oct 16, 2020 at 19:03 UTC.The Huobi cryptocurrency exchange assured users its trading platform is "Currently operating normally" after one of its biggest competitors, OKEx, announced it suspended all cryptocurrency withdrawals indefinitely.

"Huobi's cold wallet uses multi-signature and threshold signature technology to ensure the security of the private key signature process," Ciara Sun, vice president of Huobi Global Markets, told CoinDesk in a Wechat message.

While one would expect exchanges like Huobi would benefit from OKEx's news - as in the BitMex case, where large bitcoin outflows from the exchange went to its competitors - that doesn't appear to have happened because of growing concern about Huobi's operations due to two exchanges' large user base in China.

There was speculation Huobi may have loaned assets to OKEx but, according to data provided by CryptoQuant, 997 BTC was transferred from Huobi to Binance at 10:21:30 UTC Friday, Oct. 16,.

Huobi does not appear to be negatively affected by the situation at OKEx either.

Sun told CoinDesk that Huobi has "Invested" in anti-money laundering and fraud prevention "For a long time."

Both Huobi and OKEx maintain close ties to the Chinese government despite moving offices out of the country after a crackdown on crypto trading in 2017.

As regulators got tough on such things as initial coin offerings, representatives of BTCC, the first bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange in China, OKEx and Huobi met with officials from the People's Bank of China and were warned to follow laws and regulation requirements closely.

In the aftermath of 2017, BTCC sold its entity to a Hong Kong-based blockchain investment fund while Huobi and OKEx essentially got a pass by moving their operations overseas.

Huobi is based in Seychelles, the company's PR representative told CoinDesk previously, and has offices in Singapore.