Tag: okex

Crypto Exchange OKEx Delists Five Privacy Coins due to FATF Rules

Cryptocurrency exchange OKEx’s Korean arm will be delisting all five privacy altcoins including Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), Zcash (ZEC), Horizen (ZEN), and Super Bitcoin (SBTC). 

Announced by OKEx Korea on Monday, due to new international regulations, the support for transactions for the five altcoins will be ending on October 10, while withdrawal services will continue until December 10.  

The decision to delist the five altcoins has been made considering that the coins violate the “travel rule” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). 

As the five altcoins focus on privacy, the coins do not fulfill the requirements under the “travel rule” of the crypto guidelines issued by the FATF, which requires exchanges to collect and transfer customer information during transactions.  

The customer information includes location information, the beneficiary, and the originator’s name, and account numbers. The privacy coins do not allow the collection of this information; therefore, the support must end for the five altcoins.  

Currently, it still remains unclear whether these restrictions will be applied globally for the exchange.  

Image via Shutterstock

BTI Report Reveals Kraken and Coinbase as the Cleanest Crypto Exchanges

The September issue of the Blockchain Transparency Institute’s market surveillance report shows that the cryptocurrency exchange volumes of Kraken and Coinbase are the cleanest in the industry.  

The institute is also primarily responsible for filtering these volumes through its proprietary algorithm. 

“Since the start of 2019, global wash trading has reduced by 35.7% among the real Top-40 exchanges. The process of sharing our data reports with many of these exchanges has resulted in enhanced mechanisms for detecting wash trading accounts and shutting them down.”  

Evidence in the report reveals that the cleanest exchanges continue to stand with Kraken, Coinbase, Poloniex, and Upbit. In contrast, the exchanges with the highest rates of wash trading are: OKEx and Bibox.  

Globally, the report shows that Japan and the United States are in the lead of exchanges with accurate volume reporting. The report claims:  

“This can be due to several factors, the main of which is the legal and regulatory standards in these countries. However, stricter regulatory frameworks do not always produce the cleanest exchanges.”

 Bitwise Asset Management published Bitcoin trading figures and admitted up to 95% of Bitcoin trading volume was due to wash trading.   

In a report published earlier this year by Bitwise Asset Management, revealed that up to 95% of Bitcoin trading volume seen on CoinMarketCap was due to wash trading.  

OKEx Launches USDT-Margined Futures Live Trading With Up To 100× Leverage

OKEx, the world’s largest futures crypto exchanges, announced the launching of BTC/USDT margined trading on its futures platform with an enticing leverage rate of 0.01-100×. Following the fulfillment of their simulation which began on November 5, the margined futures trading was launched live on Nov. 14.

Jay Hao, CEO of OKEx, confirmed the success of the simulation saying: “The simulation of our USDT Futures Contract was very successful, and we received positive feedback from traders in the OKEx community.”

This development made Hao ensure users of a secure, stable, and dependable trading environment that would meet their interests. Hao said: “At OKEx, we’ve developed a safe, reliable, and stable environment for cryptocurrency trading, and strive to offer new services based on our customers’ interests. We’re excited to add USDT linear contract to our Futures market and next on the Perpetual Swap market to meet the interests of our growing international user base.”

Merits of this new feature contract include efficiency and cost-effectiveness, liner contract, relative stability, and intuitive trading experience. It is also enriched with features such as leverage level of 0.01 to100x, the face value of 0.0001 BTC, tice size of 0.1, daily settlement time of 08:00 (UTC) and 24 hours trading.

The report stated that other major cryptocurrencies such as BSV, BCH, EOS, ETH, ETC, LTC, TRX, and XRP would soon be launched in the market.

Image via Shutterstock

OKEx Partners with Shrimpy to Foster Crypto Portfolio Automation

According to the official blogpost, cryptocurrency exchange OKEx and Shrimpy, a crypto exchange trading bot for portfolio management and market indexing, have teamed up in a strategic collaboration in order to foster crypto portfolio automation tools which are being utilized by the crypto traders.

Shrimpy expressed their heartfelt interest in having OKEx as an exchange partner. The team, therefore, gave a warm welcome to OKEx in return as they opined that this great business partnership is meant to progress all the tools used for portfolio automation and it is highly expected to improve the way crypto investors automate their portfolio.

Since some of the features of OKEx exchange like fiat on-ramp, futures trading, margin trading, spot trading, and swap trading grant users and traders different ways to manage trading and investment risks while interacting with the cryptocurrency market, there’s a need for them to automate their various portfolios for proper management and indexing of the market.

The report also stated that OKEx has a trading fee schedule that is tiered. Possibly, this is one of the reasons Shrimpy entered into the business deal, noting that the tiered trading scheme gives traders the opportunity to decrease their trading fee from 0.15%Taker and 0.1% Maker fee to 0.03% Taker and – 0.01% Maker fee. However, the traders are expected to either increase their trading volume or hold OKEx’s utility token (OKB). Holding the exchange’s token gives incentives to the users like trading fees reduction and having a share in the fees OKEx realizes.

Image via Shutterstock

OKEx Delves Deeper Into Indian Crypto Space with CoinDCX Partnership

OKEx, a leading Malta-based crypto exchange, has shown its resilience to penetrate the Indian crypto market and now plans to launch leveraged future products in partnership with CoinDCX, the nation’s biggest crypto trading platform. 

New derivative to be established

Through the strategic collaboration, CoinDCX will be able to launch a new derivative product called DCXfutures, and this will be instrumental in enabling OKEx set foot in the Indian crypto space. 

As a result, both retail and institutional Indian investors will be in a position to trade futures, and OKEx will offer a 15x leverage on various cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether. Additionally, perpetual futures contracts will be availed in both Ether and Bitcoin. 

OKEx is being touted to prompt more liquidity based on its notable capacity of providing world-class futures. 

Head of OKEx India, Zaz Zou, noted, “India is primed to be the driving force behind the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, which is why we are keen on adding more equitable currencies to the ecosystem.”

He added, “We believe having a variety of options to transact digital currencies will bolster the growth of the economy in India as it positively impacts both crowdfunding and institutional funding.”

During DCXfutures launch, maker fees will be at 0.2%, whereas the service will be at the beginning availed to select participants on an invitation-only criterion. Nevertheless, the general public is expected to utilize DCXfutures from the second quarter of 2020 using a single wallet. 

India eyes 5 trillion dollar club status 

Sumt Gupta, CEO and co-founder of CoinDCX, noted that India holds considerable capabilities in the crypto sector. Once fully exploited, this nation could become a force to reckon with globally.

He acknowledged, “With the huge potential of cryptocurrency markets to accelerate economic growth and wealth generation in India, we believe that this collaboration takes India one step closer to joining the ‘5 trillion dollar club’ as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, allowing us to avail of new opportunities and take on new challenges.”

India has been making essential steps in the blockchain arena. For instance, according to LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report, sought after positions such as blockchain developers, have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in this country. 

Image via Shutterstock

KYC on Exchanges Powerless Against PlusToken Ponzi Scammers According to New Report

The PlusToken Ponzi scheme operators are using regulated KYC compliant exchanges to dump their cryptocurrency according to an updated report by investigative firm OXT Research.

In their first report on the PlusToken Ponzi scam, OXT Research introduced estimates for the size of the popular high yield investment scam and the depth of the market impact attributed to the accumulation and distribution of the PlusToken Bitcoin hoard – which is estimated to be an incredible 200,000 BTC.

PlusToken has been blamed for causing Bitcoin prices to fall in 2019 and as recently as March 6 when it was reported that the fraudsters had unloaded 13,000 BTC which sent the Bitcoin price plummeting by over $500.

The second edition report released on March 10, revealed the method used by PlusToken scammers to move their funds through regulated exchanges despite the strictly enforced Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance standards.

KYC Irrelevant

The report explained that the PlusToken scammers have moved their funds from the direct pile of unmixed allotments and locations to mixers like Wasabi wallet which implements a trustless coin shuffler, and then the funds would be consolidated and distributed.

While the first edition by OXT demonstrated that Huobi had been leveraged by the scammers for distribution the new edition found that while the global exchange was still the main source of distribution, a large amount of the coins have ended up on the OKEx exchange. Per the report, “OKEx is a newly labeled and significant coin destination having received nearly 50% of February distributions.”  

Both Huobi and the South Korean exchange OKEx are KYC compliant in line with the global push for increased transparency and regulation in cryptocurrency exchanges.

OXT stated the most of PlusToken’s major market effects should have passed as their data reveals that about 70% of their BTC stockpile has already been distributed.

BTC Price and Safe Haven Status

As reported by Blockchain.News, Bitcoin’s status as a safe-haven asset has been under intense scrutiny as the BTC price continues to fall amidst a series of crisis events in 2020 which have continued to create the ideal environment for the digital commodity to theoretically thrive. Beginning with the Iranian – US conflict in early Jan, the coronavirus outbreak triggering a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, and now the plummeting oil price following a disagreement in Vienna between Russia and the OPEC nations.

The data in the OXT reports, highlighted that the Ponzi scheme has sold around $1.3 billion worth of BTC in the past seven months noting the distribution increases into market strength and slowing with market price weakness. The continual dumps by PlusToken scammers each time the BTC price has risen has added drastically to the cryptocurrency’s volatility.

The market manipulation is frustrating as it is now an added variable for analysts to integrate into their inchoate analysis of the nascent asset and could be a huge factor into why Bitcoin has not met the expectations of its safe-haven status.

Source: https://insidebitcoins.com/cryptocurrency-exchanges

Image via Shutterstock

15,000 Bitcoins Transferred to Exchange Wallets Caught in Action: What Does This Mean for the Market?

In the last couple of weeks, Bitcoin (BTC) and the crypto market as a whole has witnessed some serious movements in their price charts. Bitcoin changed its course from a staggering $9,000 on March 7 to mere $4,200 on March 13, 2020. However, it later bounced back to $6,500 range with the help of an external stimulus by the European Central Bank (ECB) as they executed a bond buyback of EUR 750 Billion. 

However, since the last week, Bitcoin has been stuck in the price range of $6,100 to $6,600 with no significant fluctuations being observed. According to the tweet shared by Whale Alert, there have been transactions of 15,000 Bitcoins worth $99,702,423 from unknown wallets to different exchange wallets like Binance, OKEx, Coinbase, and Poloniex within 24 hours.  

The largest transaction executed was worth $33 million (5,000 BTC) from an unknown wallet to Poloniex.

The Whale Alert also shared the details of the rest of the transaction in a series of tweets. Some of them have been shared below.

On March 12, 2020, Bitcoin took a big blow as it lost half of its value from $9,200 to $4,200. Many people suspected the involvement of such whale traders and accused them of market manipulation. However, it seems like they had no role to play in it. According to many market analysts, the Bitcoin market crash was attributed to the US Stock market crash, Oil price fluctuation, and the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.  

The transfer of Bitcoins from ‘unknown wallets’ to exchange wallets can be interpreted in many forms. This could mean that big investors are actively accumulation BTC. It could also mean that investors are planning to invest in some altcoins and buy a big chunk of it. However, in the worst-case scenario, it could also mean that the whales are planning for a massive dump in the market to manipulate the price and take advantage of it.  

Image via Shutterstock

OKEx Adds Ether Options to Help Crypto Traders Exploit Market Volatility

Cryptocurrency exchange OKEx announced that it is adding two new services to its platform. The Malta-based exchange launched its Ether (ETH) options contracts on June 4. The exchange also announced that it will launch the EOS/USD options on June 18. 

The company also stated that they have placed 1000 Ether in the Ether options insurance funds to prevent any possible clawback. The exchange is one of the largest cryptocurrency trading and derivative platforms.

Options act as a trading risk hedge

OKEx is giving crypto users more options to wager on the movement of digital assets. The two additions to the crypto exchange will allow traders to either sell or buy the underlying assets to hedge risks and maximize profits.

OKEx has managed to make a name for itself and cultivate its position in the derivatives market, offering various derivatives products like crypto futures and perpetual swaps for Bitcoin (BTC) and ETH. The crypto exchange has positioned itself as the Bitcoin futures exchange since March. The company said that such derivatives products play an irreplaceable role in maximizing profits and hedging risks.

For example, the firm explained that when the price of Ether goes down, spot traders can choose to close or hold their positions to cut losses. With Ether options, traders can choose to purchase put options and profit from declining prices to offset their losses in the spot market while holding Ether for potential future gains.

The company said that the marked prices for the contracts are determined by OKEx’s Black-Scholes model that works on real-time market data analysis. But the final settlement prices are determined by a time-weighted average of what the asset price is over a certain period of time that will occur before the contract expires.

Open contracts allow traders to sell and buy depending on the type of contract and the underlying asset, be it Ethereum or Bitcoin helps traders to hedge against risks.  Investors’ interest in the cryptocurrency derivatives market has risen during this year, with open interest in Ether futures listed in major exchanges increasing by 100%.

Before the company launched the ETH/USD options, it has already introduced BTC/USD options, which have demonstrated to be a hit among crypto traders. Skew released recent data that indicates that OKEx’s BTC/USD options generated an average daily transaction volume of more than $10 million.

Derivatives products assist in hedging risks during difficult times and maximizing profits. Among several derivatives products, futures and options are the most popular ones.

OKEx is currently the largest Ether futures exchange by open interest, constituting 26% ($179 million) of the global tally of $672 million. Furthermore, recently the exchange has surpassed BitMEX to become the largest Bitcoin futures market share.

Although OKEx dominates the future products, Deribit crypto exchange dominates the options segment. However, OKEx has a lot to cover before threatening Deribit’s number one position in the options market.

OKEx makes entry into Africa

OKB is a global digital coin (token) adopted by OKEx. The boom of blockchain technology has led to the emergence of a new financial system identified as decentralized finance (DeFi). It is known that DeFi benefits people with low-cost financial services with higher reliability and efficiency. 

OKEx continues working together with various partners to let OKB users access various DeFi services. In September 2019, OKEx announced its plans to enter its presence in Africa’s market. The exchange targets Africa because the continent has seen a rising mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-related activities.

Jul 30 Trading Analysis: The Running of the BTC Bulls

Trading Crypto with Eugene is a series of daily commentary of market analysis and trading advice shared by Eugene Ng of Matrixport, a veteran trader with 10 years of experience in top-tier global investment banks. If you like the article, please follow us here on Blockchain.News so you won’t miss our future publications.

BTC trading resiliently around the $11k mark with open interest across global exchanges hitting $5 billion, a level not seen since February this year. This move has been driven mostly by leveraged and arbitrage community who are executing their favourite cash and carry trades (see chart below on elevated perpetual funding). But really this bull run has been ignited from the U.S. on Monday evening with regulated exchanges CME and Baktt registered record volume days. With the robust volume across most venues, price action has also been healthy for the bulls as the pull backs have been brief. BTC options open interest also hit a new all-time high of almost $2bn in notional value. Precious metals breaking out have also been commonly highlighted as another driver too.

Overnight, no surprises from the U.S. Fed who left interest rates near zero and vowed to use all its tools to support the recovery from an economic downturn that Chair Powell called the most severe “in our lifetime.” More worrying, U.S. coronavirus death toll topped 150K, the highest official toll in the world and a grim milestone in a pandemic that is still raging in some states such as Texas, Florida and California all reported record daily fatalities. But hey, for day traders and trading junkies, today’s gonna be lit for earnings as we’ve got our favourite four tech giants who make up 40% of Nasdaq market cap report earnings. This should be fun. Trade strategy: Think we have got some momentum going as rotation from DeFi and precious metals investors as well as even day traders from the U.S. (think Robhinhood). Having said that, I am always the kind who believe in taking your profits. It is not your profits until you take them. So with volatility now a 1-month high, I think it is quite attractive to scale into “take profit” with short BTC call positions as an overlay. For example the 8-day BTC 12.5k call is yielding at 21% annualized interest, 8-day ETH 350 call is yielding at 35% annualized interest. 

Levels to take profit or chase? Here you go! Check out this massive breakout chart on the weeklies! 

 

 
CME futures had the most active session on Monday, 1.3bn traded… Open Interest also climbing to a record high….

Second consecutive record session on Bakkt yesterday, interesting that people are now keen on physically settled contracts…
 

 
USD Cash and carry trade back in fashion, over 20% annualized, juicy huh?

 

Correlation between ETH and BTC breaking down with BTC powering ahead… Correlations tend to be low in bull markets and high during downtrending markets…
 

Bitcoin Whales and Large-Scale Institutions “All-In” on Bitcoin During COVID-19, Retail Investors Are More Cautious

Coronavirus has led to many investors turning towards Bitcoin as a hedge, but research from OKEx revealed that the way in which individual and institutional investors leveraged the digital asset differed.

Big-Time Players Capitalize on BTC

With coronavirus impacting economies worldwide and the US dollar plummeting, data by Malta-based crypto exchange OKEx suggested that many investors have been turning towards Bitcoin to secure their financial assets. Even institutional investors have converted to Bitcoin as a hedge option, starting with seasoned billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones.

The renowned hedge fund manager bought Bitcoin (BTC) back in May, as central banks across the globe were mass printing fiat money to deliver stimulus packages for the massive coronavirus blow impacting global economies. According to a Bloomberg report, Jones compared Bitcoin to gold, saying it reminded him of the major role played by the traditionally viewed safe-haven asset back in the 1970s. He said:

“The best profit-maximizing strategy is to own the fastest horse. If I am forced to forecast, my bet is it will be Bitcoin.”

The news was followed by Microstrategy’s announcement that the billion-dollar business intelligence and software company had acquired 21,454 Bitcoins, which was the equivalent of over $250 million at the time. The report from OKEx read:

“With stories like these hitting the headlines, it is easy to agree with the general narrative that BTC is increasingly becoming more attractive to institutional investors and big players.”

Individual investors like BTC, but more cautious

OKEx’s survey, which looked at data from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic  – January –  till August 2020, also suggested that the largest amounts of BTC transactions were small-scaled, figuring between 0 to 1 BTC. They were often the preferred transaction amount of “retail” investors, which were small-time players with nowhere close to the capital possessed by institutions.

These investors took a “wait-and-see” approach, especially after Bitcoin price hit $10,000 in May. They were more cautious with BTC, especially as cryptocurrency could at times demonstrate high volatility and dramatic price changes. The report read:

“Retail investors buy and sell relatively small amounts of BTC as the cryptocurrency’s price fluctuates and they may be more easily ‘shaken out’ of the market in times of high volatility and dramatic price declines.”

Bitcoin transactions of over 1,000 BTC surging

Bitcoin transactions gained traction again in late June, and the trend has been going up ever since. Transactions of over 1,000 BTC have become increasingly popular after Bitcoin hit the $10,000 price mark.

While small-scale investments are the most common Bitcoin market transactions, OKEx in collaboration with Catallact demonstrated this in their report:

“The number of transactions decreases as the amount of BTC being transacted increases.”

Why have institutions adopted BTC during COVID-19?

Bigger BTC investments, namely anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 BTC, appear to majorly originate from institutional investors. An uptrend of these large-scale transactions has been observed since June, and “throughout the summer of Bitcoin’s price consolidation.” Referring to this “interesting anomaly,” OKEx proposed two explanations.

The first explanation was that crypto exchanges have been shifting digital coins in various wallets for reasons, such as cybersecurity. Another explanation would be that large-scale institutional investors entering the crypto market have decided to accumulate Bitcoin in bulk, in anticipation of market prices increasing or decreasing. In addition, due to COVID-19’s impact globally, many investors have turned to Bitcoin as a hedge against economic inflation.

This in turn has led to many speculating about whether Bitcoin will potentially replace gold as a traditional safe-haven asset.

Winklevoss Backs Bitcoin

Bitcoin bulls such as Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss seem to think so. Responding to a poll originating from a former regulatory counsel executive for Coinbase, which asked when investors “realized the full potential of bitcoin and how it can change everything,” Tyler Winklevoss commented:

“When I realized that it was the first money in the world that was built purposely for the internet and therefore works just like your email.”

The Bitcoin billionaire had recently made a case about Bitcoin heading towards a markup of $500,000. 

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $10,370. The “digital gold” asset had experienced a price crash at the beginning of the month, dropping below the $11K mark and breaking two support levels.

Exit mobile version