The Hong Kong-based crypto trading platform OKEx rolled back futures transactions to 5:00 of March 30, 2018 (Hong Kong Time) after irregular transactions saw bitcoin dive to a low below $4800 on the platform, while it held $7000 everywhere else.

The “3.30 incident” triggered massive forced liquidations and wiped out hundreds of contracts. Complaint and criticism were exploding in various social networks including Telegram and WeChat in the wake of the announcement. Vociferous protestations from futures investors claimed they were going to the headquarter of OKCoin to find some justice, one trader even threatened to commit suicide in front of OKCoin’s Beijing office.

OKCoin and OKEx

OKEx, which claims to be registered in Belize and headquartered in Hong Kong, is actually operated by the crypto exchange OKCoin. The information of the two companies open to public is almost the same with the same investors and contacts.

While according to OKEx users, they failed to find its alleged Hong Kong headquarter, and thus headed for Beijing where OKCoin is located for justice.

Liu Tong, a desperate investor among them, had already been there before March 21 ahead of many protestants. Shortly in five months, Liu Tong fell from the overnight-rich-illusion down to the cruel reality.

Win Tesla by futures transactions

Liu picked up bitcoin and crypto exchanges OKCoin and Huobi on news in late 2017, before that he led a normal live by running a hardware store. In November 2017, he purchased 30.5 bitcoins priced at 60,000 Chinese yuan ($ 9,555) per coin. Being prudent back then, he evenly stored these bitcoins in OKCoin and Huobi. The end of 2017 saw bitcoin price climb all the way up above 100,000 (close to $20,000) and brought him quite a thrill.

Screenshot of OKEx’s Tesla ads

While there came the turning point of his bitcoin career – OKEx. A pop-up on OKCoin pushed Liu to download OKEx, a crypto trading platform providing fiat to token trading, token trading and futures trading with 5-20 times leverage. Attracted by the lottery ads on OKEx saying that winning Tesla by conducting futures trading, Liu joined the game.

Lose 2 million yuan in three months

Watching his wealth increasing in early days, Liu became bolder and withdrew the 15 bitcoins from Huobi to OKEx in mid-November. According to him, only on Dec.9 2017 he cashed out 2 bitcoins at the price of 94,000 yuan per coin, and by Jan.5 2018, all the rest 28.5 bitcoins had been wiped out in futures trading. 2,000,000 yuan which was supposed to buy a house now was gone forever shortly in three months, of which 900,000 yuan was a loan.

“Every time forced liquidation occurs, I was unable to do any operations with my futures account, neither could I see any trading data, which actually can be seen as maliciously forced liquidation by causing data delays or missing, even disabling the closed position.” Liu complained. He also pointed out that there’s obvious problems with OKEx’s K-line.

Later he heard rumors that OKEx is suspected of involving in illegal futures operations, forging trading volume and forced liquidation at certain points, he realized that he was not the only victim, and joined some groups where they confided their loss and happening.

Ask for an explanation

On January 26 2018, he started the journey off to seek an explanation for the above “bugs” in OKCoin’s Beijing office. However, OKCoin offered 2,000 yuan and an agreement briefed as losses in the crypto investment trading shall all be borne by investors, and investors shall guarantee they will no longer trade on OKEx and platforms related to OKEx. That meant, once Liu affixed signature on the agreement, he had to admit all his losses was caused by his misjudgment instead of the anomaly of the platform.

Liu did not sign the agreement, nor did he take the 2,000 yuan. As it is too little compared to his 2 million loss.

Soon in February, Liu, along with other victims, gathered in front of OKCoin’s Beijing office, waiting for its founder Xu Mingxing to give them an explanation. On March 16, the desperate investors finally saw Xu Mingxing as they asked, but little progress was made. Local police were called for dozens of times there, but they could do nothing for lacking regulations in digital currency transaction at present.

Protestation banner in front of OKCoin’s Beijing office reads, “Xu Mingxing of OKEX/OKCOIN, Give back my hard-earned money”

And OKCoin responded that the company has no direct relation with OKEx, saying they just had some technical and service cooperation in early time, the two companies had been separated and operated independently since October 2017.