$22M Bitcoin moves from Huobi to OKEx despite withdrawal suspension. Despite the latter having temporarily halted crypto withdrawals, massive Bitcoin (BTC) transactions from the Huobi cryptocurrency exchange are shifting to OKEx.
A total of 1,995 BTC ($22.5 million) was sent from Huobi to OKEx shortly after OKEx officially declared it was suspending withdrawals on Oct. 16, according to data from the crypto monitoring service Whale Warning.
The funds were transferred in two separate BTC transactions worth 998 BTC ($11.3 million) and 997 BTC ($11.3 million) at 3:51 a.m. EST and 06:22 a.m. EST, respectively. It raised some questions as 1,995 BTC is now locked on the platform due to the platform temporarily blocking crypto withdrawals. “Dude go the opposite way,” someone from the crypto community commented on Twitter. Others suggested that the issue could be a result of delayed BTC transactions.
Huobi’s purchases add a large amount of Bitcoin to the overall BTC balance of OKEx. OKEx currently holds a total of 276,184 BTC on its cold vault, hot wallets, and deposit wallets, according to data from the Chain.info BTC balance-based exchange ranking.
Approximately five hours later, on another broad BTC transfer, Whale Alert sounded the horn, but this time the funds apparently left OKEx somehow, amid closed withdrawals. Someone sent 3,500 Bitcoins, worth approximately $39,627,432 at the time of the transfer, from OKExx to Binance. Whale alert tweeted, adding “We suspect these are internal exchange transfers. We are investigating the matter right now.”
Referring to the 3,500 BTC OKEx withdrawal tweet from Whale Alert, a public statement from OKEx explained “OKEx’s wallet team has confirmed that the origin wallet addresses in said transactions do not belong to OKEx. The chief economist at major blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis also confirmed in a tweet today that the transactions in question had been ‘mislabelled’ and were not in fact from OKEx.”
[image: Andre Francois McKenzie]
