What happened to Binance and Huobi after OKEx opened withdrawals?

After suspending withdrawals for 41 days, OKEx resumed withdrawals at 4:00 p.m. Beijing time on the 26th. Inevitably, a wave of withdrawals seems to be beginning to emerge.

Coindesk said that about 2,822 bitcoins were moved from OKEx, with block number 658,728 mined at 08:12 UTC. According to CryptoQuant data, this is the largest single block outflow since May 2019. But Wu said that Blockchain found that CryptoQuant also had very strange data. OKEx's Bitcoin reserves suddenly fell off a cliff, reducing by about 5,000 bitcoins, but then began to recover rapidly, and then fell again and recovered.

Beijing Lian'an Chainsmap monitoring system found that one hour after the OKEx exchange reopened withdrawals at 4 pm, 70.41 BTC flowed in and 5681.79 BTC flowed out (which can be confirmed by CryptoQuant). The top three BTC outflow target exchanges were: Binance, Huobi, and ZB.com; 433,703.00 ERC20 USDT flowed in and 47,087,425.32 ERC20 USDT flowed out. The top three outflow target exchanges were: Huobi, Binance, and ZB.com.

Previously, on November 2, the information about Huobi COO being investigated was reported, and Bitcoin from Huobi began to flow into Binance. Coindesk's calculations showed that from November 2 to November 11, a total of 18,652 Bitcoins flowed from Huobi to Binance. Wu said that according to Glassnode data, after November 2, Huobi experienced the largest Bitcoin outflow of the year, while Binance experienced the largest Bitcoin inflow of the year. Glassnode showed that the maximum amount of Bitcoin outflow from Huobi in one day exceeded 25,000; while the maximum amount of Bitcoin inflow from Binance in one day exceeded 12,000.

There are also opinions that since OKEx does not disclose its wallet address, the data on outflow from OKEx is not as accurate as that of Binance and Huobi, which disclose their wallet addresses, and is not very useful for reference. In addition, after the panic gradually passed, the data on Bitcoin flowing from Huobi to Binance also began to rebound and flow back. (Blue is the flow from Huobi to Binance, and orange is the flow from Binance to Huobi)

We have to admit that Binance did nothing, but it "won by doing nothing" in this round of investigation storm. According to similarweb data, in the field of cryptocurrency, Binance's Chinese website traffic share averaged 25.6%, with a high daily average of 28.3%, up about 5%-10% year-on-year from last month, exceeding Huobi and OK. What's more troublesome is that the traffic in China only accounts for a small part of Binance.

Unlike OK Huobi, the risks faced by Binance may mainly come from the United States, where regulators are taking action against cryptocurrency giants. Forbes' report on Binance's evasion of US regulation angered Binance, which chose to directly sue the Forbes reporter. Binance once again emphasized to US customers on the global site that its accounts will be closed in 14 days, requiring them to choose the compliant Binance US for trading.

Currently, the US regulators are in a game with Coinbase, the largest US exchange. Many people attribute the current Bitcoin crash to this. Coinbase believes that the outgoing US Treasury Secretary will introduce stricter KYC requirements for cryptocurrencies, which will put all operating data of cryptocurrencies under supervision, which will seriously damage the industry.

Although the United States is currently focusing on Coinbase and has no time to pay attention to Binance, the attention of different US departments to crypto giants and the previous experience of BitMex still make Binance have hidden concerns . In August, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) released a list of approved cryptocurrencies. The stablecoins are BUSD, GUSD, and PAX under Binance, and USDT and USDC are not included, which also shows that Binance is doing everything possible to seek compliance in the United States.

With the return of Xu Mingxing, who assisted in the investigation, the investigation seems to be calming down. OKEx has launched a series of incentive measures, and it needs to dispel the outside world's doubts about its internal management; Huobi seems to be still caught in the investigation. On the 25th, it was reported that dozens of people assisted in the investigation, but the rumor was denied. The industry generally hopes that good news will come as soon as possible.

According to insiders, both OKEx and Huobi have learned from their experience and may make aggressive overseas expansion plans. Under the leadership of Du Jun, Huobi has fully moved to Singapore and is competing with Binance for the top exchanges in Japan and South Korea. Despite the "force majeure" such as border control, launching an attack on Binance in the global market and reducing dependence on the Chinese market should be the development direction of OKEx and Huobi.