Bitcoin investors, shaken by the OKEx founder’s arrest, are concerned that the same could happen to Huobi
Huobi, a crypto exchange that was founded in China and is now based in Singapore, has been shrouded in speculations that one of its senior executives had been arrested arose. These rumours have spread extensively across social media and have sparked a mass withdrawal of funds from the platform.
The rumours follow news about the OKEx founder’s arrest, which resulted in over 200,000 BTC being held in limbo because he was the sole holder of the multi-sig withdraw keys. The surprising turn of events has left Bitcoin investors wary about holding their coins on centralised exchanges.
CryptoQuant has also found that net Bitcoin outflows from the crypto exchange have shot up in the past 24 hours, indicating that users are concerned that the platform will face a similar problem as OKEx.
To answer these concerns, the exchange released a statement earlier today explaining that all the executive staff in the business is fully accounted for and that the rumours regarding one of them being arrested are both false and baseless.
The cryptocurrency exchange expounded further, by also posting a tweet on the social media platform Twitter to confront these claims.
“Huobi Global Is Operating Normally. We have become aware of rumours within our community about the arrest of a Huobi senior executive by local officials. We can share with confidence that these rumours are false.”
“All of Huobi’s management team members have been accounted for and have not been detained or arrested. We understand that the spread of false information can lead to concerns about the safety of user assets, but please rest assured your assets are safe”, they explained in another tweet.
Crypto enthusiasts on Twitter have also discussed a large amount of Tether (USDT) that suddenly flowed into the Huobi exchange, which coincides with the times when significant amounts of BTC exited the platform.
This has not done much to quell the rumours on Chinese social media platforms, which have been abuzz with tales of a senior executive of Huobi being arrested by authorities. While there is a strong possibility that the rumours will prove false, since there appears to be no evidence to back up speculations, users are not taking any chances.
While the outflow of bitcoins from the crypto exchange will likely only be a short-term trend, the damage to their users’ trust when it comes to centralised platforms may be irreversible.