OKEx is fighting back against Amber AI’s BCH Settlement Allegations
In their public response on Monday, OKEx outlined several issues with the Amber AI complaints, expressing that “These are completely false allegations and the defamatory statements have caused serious damages to OKEx’s reputation.”
The cryptocurrency exchange laid out their arguments, focusing on 3 main points that present that not only did the cryptocurrency exchange act in the best interst of their customers, but that Amber AI has no right to a lawsuit in the first place.
- Amber AI is not a customer. According to OKEx, “We do not have an institutional client profile named Amber AI, while Amber AI claim themselves as a Hong Kong-based company. We do NOT serve any customer in Hong Kong, in respect of the local laws and regulations. The OKEx account that Amber AI claimed managing is an individual account, which is not a Hong Kong resident or entity on the report of the KYC information”
- OKEx’s Futures Trading User agreement covers the actions the exchange took at the time of the early settlement. “If market anomalies occur before or after settlement and delivery, which results in wide fluctuation of futures index or abnormal clawback rate, we may postpone or early settlement and delivery as the case may be. We shall post an announcement regarding detailed rules.”
- The most important part of the discussion is the decision in general, where OKEx claims that they had to move quickly in the absence of a spot price and acted in what they believed was the best interest of their customers. “Under the circumstances, we had made the decision to perform an early settlement. We are confident that early delivery was the best option available.“
Both sides are building up their cases, and both are communicating with relative strength. Amber AI has not let up at all and is actively working to grow their case, with all of their evidence outlined on their blog post here. In the most recent updates on the blog post, they show how certain public “defenders” of the OKEx settlement actions might not be genuine.
“With basic abductive reasoning it becomes evident that the operator behind this moniker is OKEx, and that the exchange (probably) paid CoinIdol for the BitMex vs OKEx article, and also sponsored Honeycomb to publish the Reddit post. Honeycomb is likely OKEx’s external crisis-PR firm, having been the sole media outlet to have hosted an interview with Star Xu (OKEx CEO) following his recent arrest.”
On the side of OKEx, they are building up their defense, suggesting that Amber AI might be doing this in an effort to recoup losses due to poor risk management. ”Amber AI lacked a comprehensive risk management plan and blamed OKEx for their incautiousness. In fact, the majority of our users supports our decision of early delivery of BCH futures contracts.” OKEx goes on further to confirm that they have all the evidence required to sufficiently prove to a court that they were not involved in any manipulation or effort to trade against their customers. All of this is seems to be in preparation of a countersuit, with OKEx stating that Amber AIs allegations have done serious damage to the reputation of the cryptocurrency exchange.
OKEx is siting multiple examples in traditional exchanges where last minute changes to operating procedures are done out of necessity; Amber AI is diligently doing detective work to dismantle the story that this was done completely in good faith. As it stands, both sides are digging in for a costly legal battle with an outcome that could potentially change the landscape for cryptocurrency exchange regulations.
