Dr. Ibai Basabe, the founder of 2ØY, an "organization working to unite crypto," described the cryptocurrency exchange OKX as a Chinese government-owned entity. Feng Bo, a major investor in OKX, has ties to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elites.
"It’s never been banned and China has its own government owned exchange: OKX," Dr. Basabe wrote in a July 15 Twitter post.
CoinMarketCap ranks OKX as the sixth-largest crypto exchange in the world, with a 24-hour trading volume of $1.26 billion.
OKX, founded in Beijing, was the first crypto-related project which Feng Bo invested in, Decrypt reported.
In October 2018, Nasdaq described Feng Bo as the largest investor in OKX and said Dragonfly, a venture capital firm he founded, had attracted investors from companies including A16Z, Bain Capital Ventures, and Polychain Capital. Feng, who is also a founder of Ceyuan Ventures, said he intends for Dragonfly to serve as a bridge between the East and West. "We have a unique opportunity to back and bring together the leading participants in the decentralized economy - from fund managers to token project leaders, from Beijing to San Francisco to Berlin," Feng said, according to Nasdaq.
A 2012 report by Bloomberg News found that Feng is connected to China's "Immortals," "an elite class that has been able to amass wealth and influence, and exploit opportunities unavailable to most Chinese." "The identities and business dealings of these families are often cloaked in secrecy because of state censorship and complex corporate webs," the report said. The report describes Feng as "an early investor in China's Internet startups" who has co-founded multiple venture capital firms. His wife's parents, Deng Rong and He Ping, both held positions with China's embassy in Washington, and her grandfather, Deng Xiaoping, was a paramount leader in China after the death of Mao Zedong, according to the report.
Zhizu reported that Feng Bo's father was vice chairman of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Central Committee of the Chinese People's League and also served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Tenth National People's Congress.
OKX is owned by OK Group, according to DBpedia. OKX moved its headquarters from Beijing to Seychelles after China's 2021 crackdown on crypto, but OKX reportedly "still has a large number of R&D staff working in [Mainland China], including engineers, who continue to work for OKX in the form of third-party outsourcing companies."
OK Group is headquartered in Beijing, according to CB Insights.
A February report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes the blurred lines between private companies and the government in China, such as the requirement that private firms share information with the Chinese Communist Party upon demand. "In the last several years, particularly under Xi Jinping’s rule, there has been an even greater attempt by the political leadership to increase their control over the private sector, reduce its political influence, and ensure its loyalty to the system," the report says. "This has included expanding the reach of national security policies and regulations. For example, the adoption of the National Intelligence Law in 2017 requires all firms in China to accede to government demands to provide information and data as authorities deem necessary to protect China’s national security."