OKX has temporarily suspended its decentralized exchange aggregator after regulators in the European Union (EU) began looking at how it was used by North Korea to launder proceeds from a recent hack of crypto exchange Bybit.

Bloomberg reported on March 11 that the EU regulators were investigating OKX’s Web3 services for allegedly laundering funds from the Bybit hack, prompting OKX President Hong Fang and other executives to call Bloomberg’s report misleading and assert the company’s commitment to combating financial crime.

«We are addressing a tagging issue with explorers that highlights OKX DEX aggregator as the destination of trades when in fact, OKX DEX aggregator just looks for the best price to execute the order, and then the final order/trade is placed on one of the DEXs our aggregator connects to,» a spokesperson for OKX told CoinDesk in a Telegram message.

The spokesperson said that after consulting regulators, they proactively paused our DEX aggregator to implement new tagging and security upgrades.

«This decision ensures the transparency of how our software and systems work, along with the safety of our platform and users,» they continued.

Bitcoin (BTC) has steadied since last Tuesday, bouncing to its 200-day average above $84,000 over the weekend. Still, a crypto whale has taken a contrarian stance by raising a leveraged bearish bet on BTC worth millions on Hyperliquid while betting bullish on the MELANIA token.

As of writing, the whale held a short position in BTC perpetual futures worth over $445 million, generating an unrealized gain of $1.3 million. The position employed a 40x leverage and a liquidation price of $86,000, according to data source Hyperliquid and Lookonchain.

The outsized short anticipating a bitcoin price slide made waves on social media X on Sunday as pseudonymous trader CBB invited other market participants for a consortium of bulls aimed at liquidating the whale.

«11 hours ago, @Cbb0fe publicly formed a team to hunt this whale who shorted $BTC with 40x leverage. Just one hour later, the team was in action, driving $BTC above $84,690 in a short period,» blockchain sleuth Lookonchain said on X.

«The whale was forced to deposit $5M USDC to increase margin and avoid liquidation. But the hunt ultimately failed,» Lookonchain added.

As of writing, the crypto whale also held a 5x leveraged long position in the MELANIA perpetual futures, anticipating a price rise in the memecoin reportedly marketed by MKT World LLC, a Florida-registered company owned by Melania Trump, the wife of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Hyperliquid cheered the whole episode on X, saying the transparency of trading positions on its platform has redefined trading.

«When a whale shorts $450M+ BTC and wants a public audience, it’s only possible on Hyperliquid. When headlines say «Bitcoin Market on Edge,» they are equating «Hyperliquid» with the «market.» Anyone can photoshop a PNL screenshot. No one can question a Hyperliquid position, just like no one can question a Bitcoin balance. The decentralized future is here,» Hyperliquid said.

The platform was in the news last week after an influential whale executed the so-called «liquidation arbitrage» by extracting floating profits, leading to a margin shortage. That induced liquidation and transferred the risk to the decentralized exchange’s HLP vault.

Crypto asset manager 21Shares is set to liquidate two actively managed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to bitcoin and ether futures amid a wider market downturn.

The funds slated for liquidation are the ARK 21Shares Active On-Chain Bitcoin Strategy ETF (ARKC) and the ARK 21Shares Active Bitcoin Ethereum Strategy ETF (ARKY). Investors can trade shares until the market closes on March 27, with liquidation expected to take place “on or around March 28,” according to a press release.

The actively managed ETFs, which have an expense ratio of 1% and 0.93%, respectively, are set to be liquidated as U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs saw over $1.66 billion in outflows so far this month. The outflows come as cryptocurrency prices plunge. Bitcoin is down more than 12.8% year-to-date, while the broader CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) has lost around 24% of its value over the same period.

Shareholders who hold onto their shares until the liquidation date will receive payouts equal to their portion of the fund’s net asset value, the document adds.
Read more: Bitcoin Price Drop to $80K: Crypto Market Analysis, ETF & Trump Impact