One more aspect of the OKEx drama has become evident. The Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool has witnessed a dramatic hashrate drop. Miners working under the OKEx umbrella are cutting off their rigs, scared by regulatory attacks from Chinese authorities.
OKEx mining pool leaves Top 10
Journalist and observer Colin Wu—well-known for his unparalleled expertise in the Chinese blockchain market—has reported drastic changes in Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool ranking. The OKEx Pool lost 60 percent of its hashrate in 24 hours. Meanwhile, its competitors showcase double-digit increases.
In terms of hashrate share, Binance Pool is the main beneficiary of the OKEx miners' exodus. Huobi.Pool, F2 Pool and some minor entities have also increased their shares significantly.
At press time, OKEx Pool slightly recovered from its drop and surpassed BTC.TOP and Lubian mining again. Now it is responsible for roughly 4 percent of the overall Bitcoin (BTC) network hashrate, according to BTC.com statistics on the 24-hour timeframe.
Meanwhile, the total hashrate of the flagship blockchain has printed a new all-time high. According to BitInfoCharts.com multi-asset explorer, on Oct. 14, the net quantity of hashes surpassed 155 EH per second for the first time.
OKEx drama has only begun
Yesterday, Oct. 16, OKEx—the Malta-based cryptocurrencies exchange giant, paused all withdrawals. Its founder, Xu Star (Xu Mingxing), who controls the private keys from the main exchange wallets, was detained by the police. As a result, the service is now unable to authorize any asset withdrawals.
Jay Hao, CEO of OKEx, repeatedly assured all customers that their funds are safe. Furthermore, new deposits, spot and derivatives trades and staking are still available on OKEx.
According to Mr. Wu, the arrest of OKEx officers may be just one part of a chain since China declared war on money laundering services. As covered by CryptoComes previously, many influential crypto OTC merchants were arrested in the last few weeks.
Top-tier on-chain analytics vendor Glassnode revealed that about 200,000 Bitcoins (BTC) may be currently held in OKEx wallets. It is almost 1.1 percent of the circulating supply, or $2.2 bln in equivalent.