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Crypto exchange OKEx has just successfully tested a withdrawal transaction, suggesting that the service could indeed resume by November 27, as previously announced.

On-chain data analytics platform CryptoQuant first noticed the transaction, where OKEx withdrew 0.02 bitcoin (worth about $370) from one of its wallets.

As OKEx gets ready to reopen withdrawals, users could rush to liquidate their locked assets, which in turn, could impact markets.

OKEx first suspended withdrawals on October 16, after losing contact with one of its private key holders. The holder was assisting a police investigation in China. Some media reports claimed that OKEx founder Star Xu was the key holder, but OKEx has denied any connection with him.

Last week, OKEx said that it has always maintained 100% reserves, so there will be “no risk of bank run” after withdrawals resume.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A lottery in Suzhou will additionally trial the offline feature of the digital yuan, per a Monday report.

The Chinese city of Suzhou is reportedly rolling out a wider test for the country’s central bank digital currency in “red packets” starting next month.

The Paper, an online media under the state-owned Shanghai United Media Group, said in a report on Monday the trial will take place on December 12, a date that’s known as Double 12 in China – a year-end shopping festival. 

In April, it was already reported that some government employees were given transportation allowances in digital yuan – also known as DC/EP – as part of an ongoing trial in Suzhou. 

According to The Paper, the form of the wider trial in Suzhou will be similar to the one that was carried out in Shenzhen in October, where about $1.5 million in digital yuan was given out to 50,000 residents as “red packets” via a lottery. 

Residents who won the lottery could spend the free digital yuan at any of the more than 3,000 stores that participated in the Shenzhen trial.

The report said what’s new about the Suzhou trial is that it will enable an additional offline payment feature for the DC/EP wallets, where transactions can be initiated by just touching two payment devices, i.e. smartphones, even in an offline environment via the Near Field Communication technology.

Meanwhile, the Chinese city of Chengdu appears to be also doing a wider trial of DC/EP wallets. 

For instance, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), one of the big-four state-owned commercial banks in the country, has been advertising an “internal testing wallet” feature within its mobile app to at least public users in Chengdu, The Block has found.

However, at this stage, only white-listed users will be able to activate a DC/EP wallet, a customer service representative told The Block.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Labuan branch of China Construction Bank (CCB) has withdrawn the plan of raising up to $3 billion via blockchain bonds within two weeks after the original announcement made mainstream headlines.

Fusang, the Malaysian digital securities exchange where the ERC-20 bond was supposed to list for trading, said in a post on Monday that the Labuan branch of the CCB and the issuer Longbond Ltd had notified the exchange regarding the withdrawal with immediate effect.

Fusang said it has started returning all investor funds but gave no explanation on why the sponsor and the issuer withdrew the plan abruptly.

CCB’s Labuan branch in Malaysia initially announced the news of sponsoring and arranging the planned $3 billion blockchain bonds on November 10, which was to be issued via the special purpose vehicle Longbond Ltd.

The trading of the tokenized bond, which could be bought by US dollars and bitcoin, was initially scheduled to start trading on Fusang on November 13 but the listing was abruptly postponed on the same day, as previously reported by The Block.

“On Monday, 16 November 2020, the Exchange formally wrote to the Listing Sponsor to ask for a reason as to the postponement, and to ask for an updated timeline for the Listing. The Listing Sponsor responded on Friday, 20 November 2020 that it had ‘decided not to proceed,'” Fusang said in the post.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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