As of March 16, 2023, NYCCoin (NYC) and MiamiCoin (MIA) were no longer available to trade, buy, or sell via Okcoin.
However, you can still “hold these coins in your account or withdraw them and trade them on the ALEX decentralized exchange.”
The trading suspension will “remain in effect until Okcoin are able to safely restore trading, but [they] don’t know when that will be possible.”
The reason for ending support it limited liquidity “for these coins on their platform [which] has created the possibility of price manipulation and fraudulent activity.”
As a result, Okcoin will “suspend trading until they can address these potential risks and protect their customers.”
On March 16, Okcoin suspended trading of CityCoin’s NYCCoin (NYC) and MiamiCoin (MIA).
As explained in a blog post, CityCoins are safe. If you hold NYC or MIA in your account, your coins “remain in your account with the same industry-leading security they’ve always had.”
You can “keep them on Okcoin or withdraw them to another wallet.”
CityCoin trading is “still live on ALEX.”
Currently, Okcoin is the only centralized exchange “that lists CityCoins.”
You can still “trade them on the ALEX decentralized exchange.”
As noted in the update:
“We will restore CityCoin trading as soon as possible. We are working to restore CityCoin trading on our platform. While we don’t know when that will be, we provide our community with updates as soon as we have more to share.”
In the meantime, here’s what happened:
The Risk of Low Liquidity
In January 2023, the Okcoin security team noticed that the markets on their exchange for NYC and MIA “had unexpectedly low liquidity levels.”
As mentioned in the announcement:
“The concern with low liquidity is that malicious, third party actors can manipulate prices, launder stolen funds, and perpetrate other frauds. While none of these risks have occurred, we wanted to get ahead of any possible misconduct. So we moved immediately to address and stop these events from occurring.”
Their first response was “to reach out to professional market makers about improving liquidity for NYC and MIA.”
However, it became clear “that efforts to add liquidity would take time, leaving us with the suspension of trading as a last resort.”
Protecting Users and the Platform
As noted in the blog post, simply put – Okcoin operate “on a rule of safety first.”
They added:
“As a crypto exchange, our first obligation is to keep our platform safe by protecting our customers’ funds and our platform’s integrity. In the short term, this often costs us money in security costs and prevented transactions. But in the long term, our mission remains to operate a clean and safe crypto exchange that our customers can trust. That’s why we always prioritize protecting user funds and platform integrity.”