In response to the scrutiny by European Union (EU) regulators, OKX, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, has temporarily halted its decentralized exchange aggregator. The reason behind this move was the suspected use of the platform by North Korea to launder money acquired through a recent cyber attack on Bybit, another cryptocurrency exchange.
On March 11, Bloomberg revealed that EU regulators were investigating the Web3 services of OKX for potential involvement in money laundering activities related to the Bybit hack. Following this, OKX President Hong Fang, along with other top executives, labelled the Bloomberg report as misleading and reaffirmed their dedication to fighting financial crime.
An OKX representative clarified to CoinDesk via a Telegram message, “The OKX DEX aggregator is being mistakenly identified by explorers as the final destination for trades. In reality, the aggregator merely identifies the best price for an order execution, with the final order being placed on one of the DEXs that our aggregator links to.”
The representative added, “After discussions with regulators, we decided to voluntarily suspend our DEX aggregator to carry out necessary tagging and security enhancements. This decision underscores our commitment to transparency in our software and system operations, as well as the safety of our platform and its users.”