OKX CEO Threatens to Ban Accounts Linked to Tornado Cash and Garantex

Star Xu, the CEO of crypto exchange OKX, has issued a stark warning to users who engage with sanctioned entities. In an X post on Friday, Xu stated that accounts found transacting with crypto mixer like Tornado Cash and trading platform like Garantex would face account suspension.

Xu stated that depositing or withdrawing funds from an OKX to the sanctioned entities was a breach of control policy and would attract severe consequences.

“All of these will trigger compliance risk control and result in the account being cleared. Sanctions are far away from ordinary people, and most people don’t need to worry about them at all,” Xu tweeted.

Statement Amidst Widespread Speculations

Xu’s statement came after rumors circulated that OKX users, especially those in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), were in danger of losing their accounts. A user, Satoshi Friend, warned his community to refrain from using the derivative platform after stating his account was banned abruptly.

The user further noted that accounts of users and influencers from CIS were blocked inconsequentially, blaming these acts on the radically changed policies of OKX and the platform’s CEO towards users from the region since May 2024.

In response, Xu termed the allegations misleading and wrong. He pointed to the user’s involvement in transactions that violated OKX’s sanction control policy, clarifying that it was the sole reason behind Satoshi Friend’s account ban.

“As we talked in the private chat, your account violated our sanction control policy, and we can’t continue to offer services to you. You have a couple of significant transactions related with sanctioned exchanges or defi protocols. We allowed you to withdraw your clean funds before we blocked the account,” Xu said.

Crypto-mixing platform Tornado Cash is notorious among hackers as a means to launder stolen funds. Its founder, Alexey Pertsev, was sentenced to 64 months of imprisonment in May on charges of money laundering.