Exchanges

OKEx undergoes ‘scheduled wallet maintenance’ amid hack rumours

Cryptocurrency exchange OKEx has denied rumours of a hack this morning, stating that “scheduled wallet maintenance” is taking place.

Speculation intensified on social media after a ‘Whale Alert’ Twitter account revealed that more than $270 million was sent from the exchange to unknown wallets.

Prominent Bitcoin influencer Richard Heart tweeted: “Rumours that OKEx is hacked. Hundreds of millions?”

However, OKEx’s head of PR, Jennifer Chow, confirmed to Coin Rivet that no hack has taken place.

Chow said: “Regarding the rumour, it is a regular wallet maintenance which will happen every couple of weeks.”

Jay Hao, the exchange’s CEO, confirmed that the activity was a result of wallet maintenance on Twitter by writing: “It is scheduled wallet maintenance, don’t worry. Thanks.”

There have been several major cryptocurrency exchange hacks over the past few years. Binance lost more than $40 million to cyber criminals in May, while CoinCheck saw $500 million in NEM tokens stolen in 2018.

OKEx is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of daily trade volume, facilitating more than $1 billion worth of trades on a daily basis.

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Oliver Knight

Londoner ‘Ollie’ graduated from Birmingham City University with a journalism degree in 2016. He combines his writing with his love of crypto and blockchain here at Coin Rivet, saying “It disrupts well-established institutions (banks) while giving an avenue to the less fortunate to achieve financial freedom.” Like all true Londoners, his pet hate is… “People standing on the left-hand side of the escalators on the Tube!”.