- A group of over 10 persons stormed the offices and roughed up employees
- This is not the first incident to take place in OKCoin’s Beijing’s office
- Xu’s team blames its business rivals for organizing the malicious attacks against OKCoin.
Burglars broke elevators and smashed doors to force their way into OKCoin cryptocurrency headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday, October 23, 2018. The group of intruders threatened staff and vandalized the premises before the police drove them away.
Beijing Office Stormed
Per the official statement released by OKCoin via their official Weibo account, a group of over 10 unknown persons stormed their Beijing offices and roughed up employees. The report explains that the individuals were extremely violent and that the safety of their employees was also seriously threatened.
The unforeseen situation disrupted normal operation in the office and the company notified the authorities about the situation. The company reported no serious injury or significant physical violence. OKCoin stated:
“At about 14 o’clock in the afternoon of October 23, more than a dozen unidentified personnel broke into the OKCoin Beijing office through violent means such as hitting the elevator and damaging the door.”
Before the ugly incident, OKCoin reported seeing a group of faceless individuals hanging around their offices. The exchange said on being questioned; the group refused to identify themselves and claimed they were OKCoin users, raising speculation the goons were hired to disrupt their normal operations.
Speculation about the reason behind the attack is rife with one theory, as reported by 8BTC, saying the violence could have been precipitated by the company’s decision to offer futures trading services. This caused some users to experience forced liquidation and irregular transactions.
OKCoin, which claims to be the world’s leading digital assets trading platform, is now headquartered in San Francisco, California, following China’s ban on cryptocurrency trading. The company’s CEO Chris Lee moved to join Houbi in May after the company completed a backdoor listing in Hong Kong.
Irregular Past
OKCoin founder Xu Mingxing has previously been accused of fraud after being suspected of irregular account manipulation. Xu has also been interrogated by Shanghai public security organs following accusations of fraud related to cryptocurrencies, events and blockchain-related payments. A day before the break-in, Xu published a Weibo post criticizing “some media” and “illegal stalking” in Beijing.
This is not the first incident to take place in OKCoin’s Beijing’s office. For instance, In March 2018 an investor who had lost a whopping RMB 11 million ($1.6 million) in the company’s Haidian office, which included money belonging to his shareholder threatened to commit suicide by taking a pesticide.
Xu’s team believes that somehow its business rival Huobi is responsible for organizing and accomplishing the malicious attacks and reports against OKCoin.
