Introduction

OKCoin would like to state that it wishes the following information did not have to be made public. However, the repeated allegations against the company by Roger Ver and Changpeng Zhao extends beyond a contract dispute. OKCoin must make the following statements to refute the allegations. It is not our intention nor our policy to hurt the careers of former employees nor the reputation of others.

Mr. Roger Ver’s allegations of forgery by Star Xu has already been refuted by Ben D. McGinnes in the conclusions of his report http://okbounty.adversary.org/[1]



Background on Changpeng Zhao’s tenure at OKCoin

To begin, we would like to inform you of Changpeng Zhao’s (CZ) many harmful acts of conduct against OKCoin in the few months he was at the company.



1. On Bitcoin.com, Changpeng Zhao forged an agreement with Roger Ver version 8 (v8)

Changpeng Zhao previously told Roger Ver v8 was forged by Star Xu which has been proven to be false. Changpeng Zhao stated to Coindesk he does not recall a v8 of the Bitcoin.com agreement. OKCoin has publicly released the video taken by the notary public of the QQ chat history on which platform Changpeng Zhao sent v8 to our accountant on December 16th 2014.

Changpeng Zhao also sought to conceal the QQ evidence by deleting the accountant he sent the v8 file to from his contact list on QQ. Changpeng Zhao believed this would prevent access to the chat history by the accountant to prove his sending of v8 on December 16, 2014. The chat history between CZ and our accountant remained accessible by our accountant because the two were in a joint group on QQ. Changpeng Zhao has claimed the screenshot of the QQ conversation is photo-shopped by OKCoin yet as CTO, he was unable to delete the QQ history properly. OKCoin was able to confirm his QQ chat history and released the video of his actions as evidenced by the notary public.

This video will be part of a formal report that we will be releasing this week that will be validated by a notary public.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVeEuG44o4&feature=youtu.be [2]

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/BhPYLcEai_w/[3]



Summary:

0:00 - Connecting to Notary Public's internet

1:00 - Login to Accountant's QQ account

1:26 - Searches for Former Employee's contact and chat history

1:35 - Chat history and all past attachments that were sent are shown on the right hand side It can be seen here that v7 and v8 of the contracts were sent to the Account (v7 sent on 15:17:24 Dec 16,. 2014 and v8 19:29:47 Dec 16, 2015)

1:55 - Contract v8 opened for examination (This is the version that includes the 6 month termination clause)

2:15 - The 6 month termination clause can be seen on the last line of the contract

2:22 - Contract v7 opened for examination

2:54 - Former Employee's passport opened (censored)

3:02 - Former Employee's public QQ account



2. Changpeng Zhao falsified experience, eventually pushed out by OKCoin

When CZ interviewed at OKCoin, CZ claimed to be an internet technology expert and particularly well versed in building trading systems. He vowed to make a significant contribution to the company. As such OKCoin gave a very high salary and a large amount of equity in hiring CZ and asked CZ to also serve as head of the international business. However, upon arriving at the company, it was evident that CZ did not understand the basics of the technology.

a. When a performance problem occurred in our database, as a ‘CTO’ CZ could only stand by and observe other colleagues analyze and fix the problem.

b. When the company sought to build a FIX API, the company let CZ build it as our other engineers at the time were not experts and left this to CZ due to his claimed proficiency. After a month, there was no progress by CZ and our other engineers spent a few days to write and release FIX.

c. When OKCoin’s matching engine experienced bugs, CZ was unable to improve the matching engine, leaving Star Xu and engineers to design a new version of the matching engine. During this time CZ learned from our engineers on the process, then later claimed to others he was responsible for the development of the new matching engine.

d. CZ as CTO did not contribute to OKCoin a line of code nor solved a technical problem.

After repeatedly founding these problems, CZ was asked to either leave the company or transfer divisions to market the international business. CZ informed the company he would return home to Japan from Beijing where our office is located to consider. CZ returned to inform the company he would leave the company. After leaving, CZ stated to the public that he left citing different directions. The international team that CZ built mostly left the company as well. Under the leadership of our new head of international, our foreign business has achieved significant results and paved new strategies for the company.



3. Changpeng Zhao’s departure from Blockchain.info

During the OKCoin interview with CZ, when asked why he only worked at Blockchain.info for a few months, CZ told the company that new Blockchain.info CEO Peter Smith is a very bad man and he left due to differences in direction with him as well and that he stated that Blockchain.info had a lot of problems. Since then, CZ has also left OKCoin due to differences in direction.



4.Changpeng Zhao refuses to take responsibility for forging Roger Ver’s signature and sending v8 to our accountant over QQ even after the release of the hard evidence QQ video. Nor has Changpeng Zhao taken responsibility for signing the hardcopy agreement of v8

Since being pushed out of OKCoin, CZ has repeatedly created new accounts on Reddit to trash OKCoin. This has been a consistent behavior since his departure. The allegations he makes about the company today under his name, we have reason to believe he's been making for several days with other reddit accounts in hopes OKCoin would cave to public pressure.



5. Bitcoin.com Contract

OKCoin has always had suspicions that CZ betrayed the company. Would you write a contract where the other side could cancel the agreement at anytime while you could only stop the contract after 5 years? Would you put yourself in a position where you provide resources to develop the website to only be taken away by Roger at anytime?



6. CZ's deceitful tactics

After CZ left, he wanted to create an exchange that linked to all exchanges. CZ told OKCoin that BTC China has already agreed to this agreement. Similarily, CZ also went to BTC china and said OKCoin had agreed to the agreement. Later CEO Bobby Lee called Star Xu to find out that neither BTC China nor OKCoin had agreed to the agreement in the first place.





OKCoin’s response to the allegations made by Changpeng Zhao



1. Bots

On OKCoin, there are thousands of bots. There are hundreds of API users in the QQ customer group. OKCoin even offers a paid service to help high frequency traders by setting up co-location for our customers. OKCoin in the testing of server clusters do operate a few bots in order to test the matching engine performance and accuracy. CZ as “CTO” does not even know what is a test cluster, and what is a product cluster.



2. Fake volume

OKCoin does not need to have any fake volume. Our customers run a large amount of bot trading acting as market makers. OKCoin in production environment does not run any bots of its own. Perhaps it is CZ during his time as “CTO” running bots of his own?



3. Stefan Thomas’ Audit

CZ serving as “CTO” does not even understand what an audit is. OKCoin.cn has spot margin trading. The margin of BTC and fiat comes via P2P lending. Due to Chinese laws, OKCoin only allows a few big customers to lend BTC and fiat. However, these customers after lending out the coins can still see the assets in its balance as lent out. However the borrower can sell the coins. As such in order to prevent double counting during the audit, the lender has to be removed in order to conduct a proper audit. CZ does not understand at all why the accounts had to be removed and instead says nonsense.



4. Cold wallet

CZ cannot stop lying. OKCoin’s method of cold wallet storage is detailed here: https://www.okcoin.com/about/security.do[4]



5. Employee / CZ trading on OKCoin

OKCoin does not encourage employees to speculate on Bitcoin. It has always been a stated company policy to not trade on OKCoin. However, our product managers need to understand the process of trading, our customer service is also required to learn how to answer customer questions, and our engineers need to test the accuracy of the code. We created a number of public accounts wherein the company deposits a small amount of funds for these purposes. This is normal. Do employees of Coinbase or Bitfinex not use their own app or product? Those with privileged information at OKCoin absolutely do not trade on that information.

In truth, it is CZ that has been in significant violation of our company accord. Post his departure, it was discovered that his personal account at OKCoin had at various points several millions of CNY on the exchange and traded with frequency. We apologize to our customers for the behavior of our “CTO”.



6. CZ’s request to see bank statements

CZ cannot functionally do the job of a CTO, lied about his experience and the company had prior to his request reached a conclusion to ask for his departure from a significant role. Why would the company show its statements to him?



7. CZ offered to take over Bitcoin.com?

During his departure, CZ mentioned handing over bitcoin.com to him. He did not offer to pay for the domain. If OKCoin is paying $10,000 per month, why should CZ as an ex-employee be managing the domain? If he was intending to pay out of pocket $10,000 per month, he needn’t have asked anyone at OKCoin to take over management. He could have simply asked his friend Roger Ver to terminate the contract with OKCoin with 1-month notice and manage the site thereafter. Why does CZ and OKCoin even need to discuss?



8. CZ owed salary

OKCoin is currently withholding CZ’s January 2015 and February 2015 salary due to the following reasons:

a) We are currently still in the process of transferring CZ’s ownership of our international entities. Once CZ has been removed from all documents, we can release the rest of CZ’s salary.

b) CZ until now, has not returned company property including the MacBook he was given.

c) CZ has not explained his forgery of the v8 contract.

We have already assured CZ that after completion of these three items, the withheld payments would be made in full.

In January 2015 and February 2015, CZ essentially no-showed to work. In our company attendance records, he only came to the office a few days. However, since OKCoin pushed CZ out, OKCoin still agreed to pay his wage for January 2015 and February 2015



9. Allegations of impersonating a lawyer

OKCoin's lawyer Li Ya Jun's contact information can be seen on our website.



10. About the OKCoin Team

It is true that most of OKCoin's old international team has left. However, OKCoin has already recruited a new international team. OKCoin's product and engineering team has always remained stable. CZ attempted to recruit a few of OKCoin's team members but was unsuccessful. This incident was subsequently reported to OKCoin's CEO.

OKCoin has over 100 people and continues to grow. We are always interested in talented and capable people and welcome those to apply and join the team.



11. OKCoin Processes withdrawals 24/7

For anyone in doubt, we are happy to process withdrawal orders for customers at anytime.





We are truly regretful for this incident. OKCoin believes that Bitcoin is a significant invention of our time and we are currently using this technology in our new products. We believe that this technology will be a fundamental force in improving our society. Even if all bitcoin exchange activity happened on the OKCoin platform, it would only be a small part of the greater Bitcoin ecosystem. Our ambition is not limited to our exchange business and we will defend ourselves with any new allegations from CZ. Soon the world shall see OKCoin’s complete vision and products.