Famous derivatives exchange OKEx has suspended the facility of withdrawals as reports unveil that the founder of OKEx’s has been in the custody of police over a weak.

The news of withdrawal suspension has caused panic in the market as cryptocurrency markets lost significant value in just two hours. In its official announcement, the exchange said one of its key holders is cooperating Police in investigations.

The cryptocurrency markets suffered greatly from confusion created as a result of OKEx’s news of the suspension. According to some reports, OKEx founder Xu Mingxing has been arrested by the Police. The exchange’s spokeswoman stated it is a separate entity from operator company OK Group and she is restrained to pass any comment over Xu Mingxing.

OKEx has Suspended Withdrawal Service

According to the announcement, only withdrawal service is suspended and other facilities such as trading, staking, deposits, and derivatives activities, will not be affected at all. The company said the decision has taken for the security of users and also apologized to the customers. “The decision to pause withdrawals was taken with user security in mind,” it added.

On reports of Mingxing’s arrest, some crypto news outlets approached the OKEx’s executive team, but the spokesperson said they cannot disclose the “nature of an ongoing investigation.”

According to the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, OKEx has 1.1% of total BTC supply in exchange’s wallets.

There are several reports circulating about KOEx’s founder in the market. For instance, local news agency BlockBeats stated Xu “might [have] move[d] some money to HK [Hong Kong] through illegal private bank.” It was reported recently that the company had received almost $74,414 from some fraudulent actors.

Crypto Markets Suffered

Due to withdrawal’s suspension, Bitcoin plunged by 2.5% in just 2-hours. Similarly, crypto markets lost $10.74 billion in two hours after losing a 3.03% value.

OKEx is the second most recognized platform for crypto derivatives after BitMEX. BitMEX is also suffering from trials as the US regulators charged BitMEX’s owners for running an unregulated crypto exchange.

Centralized exchanges have been suffering over recent months. KuCoin got hacked as more than $250 million washed away in the attack. BitMEX and OKEx have become the latest targets of regulators.