Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and CEO of major crypto exchange Binance, did not appreciate the public help offer of the CEO of competing exchange OKEx, Jay Hao in response to Binance’s new halt on trading. On Mar. 4, Binance announced that it has initiated unscheduled system maintenance. The work on the exchange’s infrastructure was completed by press time. As a result of the maintenance, Binance “suspended deposits, withdrawals, spot trading, margin trading, P2P trading, lending, redemption, as well as asset transfers from sub-accounts, margin accounts, futures accounts, and fiat wallets.” Futures trading, on the other hand, continued as usual. OKEX …

As the cryptocurrency industry continues to mature, security remains a major challenge. Over the last few weeks, a number of cryptocurrency exchanges — namely, OKEx, Bitfinex, Digitex and Coinhako — have experienced security breaches. Although the attackers apparently did not manage to steal any funds, one of the incidents resulted in a leak of Know Your Customer data. All of the breaches have reportedly been dealt with as of press time, and all of the affected exchanges are back online. OKEx and Bitfinex targeted in a series of DDoS attacks Two different major crypto exchanges were reportedly hit with distributed …

An ex-employee of cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Digitex began leaking stolen Know-Your-Customer (KYC) on Telegram. The stolen data reportedly includes passport and driving license scans and other sensitive documentation pertaining to more than 8,000 Digitex customers. The Seychelles-based exchange issued Cointelegraph a statement indicating that it is not currently able to comment on the incident and is seeking legal counsel: “Digitex Futures is aware of a leak of confidential data. We are not able to comment fully on the incident at this time and are currently seeking legal counsel. However, we can confirm that this was not an external hack but …

Cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx and Bitfinex are suffering multiple denial of service attacks. It is unclear as of now if the attacks are connected, though OKEx CEO blamed competitors on his personal Weibo page. OKEx first suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Feb. 27 at approximately 11:30 AM EST. CEO Jay Hao posted on his personal Weibo page as the attack was unfolding, blaming unnamed competitors in the attack. The attack routed as much as 200 gigabytes per second of traffic, which put strain on OKEx systems. At approximately 4:30 AM EST on Feb. 28, the denial of …

The Ravencoin community continues to argue over what mining algorithm the project should adopt in the future to best deter ASICs, despite Ravencoin conducting a hard fork intended to bolster ASIC-resistance just five months ago. Tron Black, Ravencoin’s lead developer, posted an update on Feb. 18 stating that “work is ongoing to test various alternative algos for mining Ravencoin.” He added that the campaign to change algorithms is being led by “a large contingent of GPU miners.” “Several algos have been tried with benchmarking. Some will not work because they are too slow for validation,” Black continued. The post also …

Bitcoin (BTC) futures are fast becoming the darling of institutional investors as open interest spikes 60% since the start of 2020. Data from monitoring resource Skew Markets shows that open interest across major futures offerings from exchanges now stands at more than $4 billion. BitMEX, OKEx futures open interest passes $1B Over half of that stems from two companies — derivatives giant BitMEX and crypto exchange OKEx — both of which now have open interest in excess of $1 billion. Bitcoin futures open interest (exchanges only). Source: Skew Markets On Monday, fellow platform Deribit confirmed month-on-month Bitcoin futures options turnover …

Major cryptocurrency exchange OKEx is at the 50th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos this week, promoting blockchain technology as a new motor for the global financial system. Two presentations — delivered by the OKEx Financial Markets Director Lennix Lai on Jan. 21 at the Russia House 2020 and EmTech Investment Meeting 2020 — focused minds on the challenge of extending financial services to the over two billion people worldwide who remain unbanked. “A free, open, permissionless financial system” In his presentation Lai argued that a digital, decentralized financial system underpinned by blockchain and cryptocurrencies can be of mutual …

Where and how to trade Bitcoin options? There are a number of Bitcoin options trading venues currently on the market, with various pros and cons, fees, geographic restrictions, capital restrictions and user experiences. There are a number of popular Bitcoin options trading venues available today, including Deribit, LedgerX, IQ Option, Quedex, Bakkt and, most recently, OKEx. Each has its own set of pros and cons and should be evaluated against a trader’s specific needs. OKEx’s new offering is worth investigating, however, as they will be the first platform to allow traders to not only buy options but also write/sell options. …

A DeFi service and tech provider says its “Cloud SaaS” and white-label crypto trading platform solution has served more than 130 partners around the world — onboarding more than 5 million retail traders and taking custody of assets worth $6 billion as a result. Bluehelix says it provides crypto-to-crypto trading, wealth management, over-the-counter services, as well as options contracts. Currently, it has also launched perpetual contracts to licensed brokers and exchanges with both Tether (USDT) Margin Swap and Coin Margin Swap — either on a Software-as-a-Service basis or via a white-label solution. Bluehelix states its SaaS cloud solution enables partners …

OKEx chief operating officer Andy Cheung announced Jan. 7 that he has resigned from the cryptocurrency exchange to form a new blockchain consultancy institute called Bitwork. The entrepreneur’s stated goal is to help projects connect to markets and drive mass adoption. Helping create quality projects Cheung claimed that his contribution toward the mass adoption of cryptocurrency is very limited within an exchange. Therefore, with OKEx’s blessing, he left to better achieve these stated goals with this new venture. His inspiration for Bitwork comes from his role at OKEx: “The question I was always asked in OKEx was: How can my …

The digital currency space has seen rapid growth and expansion in 2019, with heightened interest from governments and global corporations. Cryptos recovered from the 2018 bear market, when with Bitcoin (BTC) crashed to as low as $3,800, leaving numerous experts to paint a gloomy picture of a longstanding bear market and call the downturn in the first half of 2019 the longest and harshest in the crypto history. While cryptocurrency markets were struggling to recover, corporate and central bank digital currencies have quietly become a focus of attention. The blockchain sector has seen exponential growth in 2019, as it became …

Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange OKEx has launched Bitcoin (BTC) options trading for a select group of traders ahead of a public launch in January 2020. In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Dec. 26, the exchange — currently ranked third-largest by daily trading volume globally — has indicated that the new contract will be settled daily in Bitcoin (BTC). Diversifying hedging strategies for crypto traders As a popular derivative that enables traders to hedge against asset price swings in either direction, an options contract provides the chance to purchase either a right to buy (a call option) or sell (a …