Market Watch | Bitcoin | $11,396 | 7 day: +3.7% | | Ethereum | $371 | 7 day: +1% | | All crypto | $356b | 7 day: +2.3% | | Bitcoin dominance | 59% | 7 day: +0.4% | Prices as of 3 p.m. EDT
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The second most important headline of the year arrived last night: the detainment of OKEx's co-founder and the exchange's indefinite suspension of withdrawals, freezing over $3b worth of customers' bitcoin plus untold altcoins. Wow! Today's headline is arguably second in importance only to the U.S. government's indictment of BitMEX founders. I'm sure the fallout will continue. I will continue tracking developments. | |  Aaron |  | | |
 OKEx's incredible explanation China's cryptocurrency giant OKEx has suspended withdrawals indefinitely. As of yesterday, OKEx possessed at least 276,000 bitcoin, worth over USD$3b, plus untold values of altcoins. - OKEx is among China's two largest cryptocurrency exchanges, claiming to process half as much as the world's largest exchange, Binance.
- Yesterday alone, OKEx reported daily cryptocurrency transactions of $3.3b in spot plus $2.1b in derivatives. Those figures annualize to ostensibly $2t of transactions per year.
- According to reports from China's Caixin, police have apprehended OKEx co-founder Mingxing "Star" Xu.
- Police are still detaining Xu.
- Hours before OKEx's announcement, significant quantities of bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Tron (TRX) were withdrawn from known, OKEx-affiliated addresses.
- OKEx CEO Jay Hao has confirmed Xu's "cooperation" with police due to a "personal issue," claiming that the investigation would not affect the safety of OKEx deposits.
- OKEx's indiscriminate denial of all withdrawals is available here. Their statement justifies the indefinite suspension of customers' assets by appealing to website terms of service, "OKEx may change the service and/or may also interrupt, suspend or terminate the service at any time with or without prior notice."
Decrypt 
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 Heath Tarbert Heath Tarbert, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), says that "maybe" he is looking into enforcement actions regarding other exchanges like BitMEX. - Tarbert appeared for a Q&A session during Coindesk's Invest: Ethereum Economy virtual conference Oct. 14.
- During the conference, Tarbert praised Ethereum openly. He said that the more decentralized Ethereum becomes, the more it will resemble a commodity rather than security.
- Commission members of the SEC have not confirmed whether or not Ethereum's ICO was an unregistered securities offering.
- (The SEC's William Hinman famously excluded Ethereum's ICO in his June 2018 speech, saying, "putting aside the fundraising that accompanied the creation of Ether, based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions.")
- Tarbert indicated that the CFTC is "on the look-out" for other non-compliant exchanges after the enforcement action with BitMEX.
- Tarbert gave a clear picture of how he thinks decentralized finance and the Ethereum Foundation could cooperate with U.S securities and commodities laws.
- Tarbert admitted that decentralized finance (DeFi) technology is undoubtedly revolutionary, and could reduce wasted fees by intermediaries, but he did not comment on how DeFi tokens could fit into U.S. commodities and securities laws.
Coindesk
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Counsel to Bancor (BNT) file a motion to dismiss one of several proposed class-action lawsuits. This month's motion to dismiss one proposed class would affect those who purchased BNT anytime during the last 27 months: June 12, 2017 through Sept. 11, 2020. - In the filing, leaders of Bancor's software company, BProtocol Foundation, claim that BNT cannot be the basis for a class-action lawsuit because BNT is not a security.
- The lawsuit filing dates back to April of this year when Roche Cyrulnik Freedman LLP and Selendy & Gay PLLC asserted that BProtocol's leaders committed federal securities violations. The lawsuit is one of 11 other similar lawsuits filed that month against seven distinct cryptocurrency issuers as well as four cryptocurrency exchanges. A judge denied motions by the plaintiffs to consolidate the lawsuits, so the lawsuits are proceeding independently of one another.
Law360
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 Technologies of strategic U.S. national importance The White House calls for research and investment into blockchain technologies in order to defend against Russian and Chinese threats. - The Trump administration revealed a new plan to boost technological research and tackle threats from rival nations. The government aims to target unfair practices by foreign threats, naming China and Russia, by combining aspects of individual agencies as well as the federal government for technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
- The strategy covers 20 technologies, including distributed ledger technologies. The National Security Council will update the list of technologies annually.
- The document is available here.
Law360
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 Final judgment against Argyle Coin's Harold Seigel The $30m Argyle Coin (RGL) ICO, which spanned from diamond mines to churches to Gucci to Venezuela, is ending with a $4m settlement. - A judge in a Florida federal court has approved a final judgment with a settlement of more than $4m for a SEC lawsuit filed against an allegedly fraudulent $30m initial coin offering (ICO) called Argyle Coin (RGL).
- A father and son, Harold and Jonathan H. Seigel, operated the scam.
- U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg approved a permanent injunction against the pair.
- The judge further ordered Harold Seigel and his company H.S. Management LLC to pay almost $4m, including value received from diamond mines and the fraudulent Argyle Coin scheme.
- The court ordered Harold Seigel and Jonathan Seigel to pay $100,000 and $50,000, respectively, in additional civil penalties.
Law360
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Quick Hits: - Hackers gained access to 2,000 customer accounts at Robinhood during a recent series of attacks according to a report dated Oct. 16.
- Nigeria's federal government announces a plan to facilitate crypto adoption with a vision to create a "Digital Nigeria." The Nigerian Federal Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy will partner with the National Information Technology Development Agency to develop a blueprint for national blockchain adoption.
- Shibuya-based habilitation trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi for the bankrupt bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has filed a motion to extend the rehabilitation plan's submission deadline at the Tokyo District Court.
- Five cryptocurrency exchanges – Coinbase, Huobi, Binance, OKex, and Kraken – hold 10.6% of bitcoin's circulating supply. The exchanges possess more than 1.96m bitcoin (BTC) among themselves. (As noted above, OKEx held over $3b worth of bitcoin prior to suspending withdrawals.)
- As Apple device adoption grows in the enterprise, organizations are looking for ways to seamlessly manage and secure devices while extending the world-class Apple experience users expect.*
*This is a sponsored post.
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 |  | Written and curated by wide-eyed bitcoin watcher since $1, Aaron Wise. Streaming headline junkie, Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, 2017 founder of Cryptocurrency Newsfeed. Temporarily based in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. | | | | Editor | Edited by Eduardo Garcia in New York. Eduardo is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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