OKCoin and Huobi suspended Bitcoin withdrawals in response to pressure from Chinese regulatory authorities. Whether the suspension was necessary from a technical point of view or mandated by regulators seem uncertain from OKCoin and Huobi official announcements. The tandem and identical timeframe estimates for resumption of withdrawals suggest the latter.

The purported motivation is conformance with AML laws. Coinpit has been designed to avoid these issues in the first place by using a preventive AML model which makes the exchange unattractive for money laundering.

Coins on an exchange are always at risk. Every moment on an exchange is a chance for loss from all manner of events. Coinpit has been designed to address these threats from a comprehensive and foundational manner, and provably so in many cases.

We call these provable properties “Safety.”

Coinpit ensures that traders can have a recovery transaction that they can use to recover coins directly from the bitcoin network. This feature prevents exchanges from arbitrarily suspending withdrawals. Coinpit deposit accounts are multisignature addresses that require a user private key to move funds. This feature combined with the above ensures coins are always in your control when not in a trade. User coins on Coinpit are visible on blockchain at all times. This makes Coinpit the only exchange to have 100% continuous proof-of-reserve. Coinpit settlements are simply coinjoin transactions with coins moving from losing to winning margin accounts, proving that no unauthorized coin movement to exchange-control occurred. Since coins from margin accounts can only move back to deposit accounts or to settlement transactions, it’s trivial to detect theft in seconds. Anyone can participate and monitor (not just Coinpit) and we encourage this.

Safety features coming soon:

Safety of coins in margin account. Automated audit and proof of correctness. A trader should be able to cryptographically verify that he did place a trade and it was filled at the specified price and the P&L and settlement are accurate.

In traditional finance, safety is aspirational and is enforced by licensing, regular audits and other expensive regulatory practices. Cryptography provides a far more efficient and often provable manner to enforce these properties and hopefully fostering a more stable financial system.