How did Okcoin take over Huobi and BTCChina

[lomalio]

Okcoin is newer than the other exchanges. Yet it has more volume. How did this happen?

[fdiini]

Volume might be inflated.

Btchina wrote an article on their volume a few months ago implying those are fake volume.

[BitCoinNutJob]

China volume is hard to judge, i suggest looking at btcchina volume to gauge the true demand from china.

OKcoin taking over is hard to judge.

[justforbtc]

OKCOIN has the largest volume for 1-2 month already.

[mx]

If you are a Chinese BTC trader, OKCoin is an obvious first choice:
1. It has better customer service that provides 7/24 phone and QQ support; if you trade on OKCoin, you are likely to get phone calls from them regularly - they are very concerned with customer experience and you feel valued as a customer
2. The company has made several successful social media campaigns. Its Weibo account has twice as many followers as Huobi has.
3. The company maintains its prestige with a high-profile leading team including a popular TV hostess as the marketing director and a former Blockchain.info director as CTO
4. It has more trading tools and support USD deposit and recently launched futures trading
This list is not exhaustive by any means.

[cpzhao]

Many thanks, MX!

I am Changpeng Zhao, CTO and Partner at OKCoin.com, the former Blockchain.info Head of Development mentioned in the above thread, here responding to your inquiry.

To add my 0.02BTC, we focus on execution.  In addition to our superior customer service, etc, we have a few things others don't have.

OKCoin is the first and (so far) only major Chinese bitcoin exchanges to roll out an International Site.  BTCChina's Bobby Lee recently said on Coindesk "We [BTCChina] have some intent to try that, but we’re not launching a full-fledged international expansion, so that’s sort of the situation right now."

OKCoin is the first Chinese bitcoin exchange to implement algorithmic trading.  Others have followed to some extent, but they have less strategies/algos than we do.  For example, no one has Icebergs, TWAPs yet.

OKCoin is the first (and probably still the only) major bitcoin exchange to release mobile Apps on iPhone and Android that support touch-to-trade, as well as Candlestick charts, price alerts, etc.  No one else have that.

OKCoin is the first (and probably still the only) major bitcoin exchange to release bitcoin Futures.  Now if you are a miner, or a merchant accepting bitcoins and don't want to deal with volatility (the single biggest complaint about bitcoin), you can lock in your bitcoin earnings with futures.  We just added a 3 months Futures based on user demand.  No one else have this.

Lastly on the volume, a few of our competitors mistakenly thought our volumes are fake, which is great for us actually.  Their wishful thinking and denial is to our advantage.  Unfortunately, they said a few things publicly, which hurts our image a bit in the short term.  But over time, truth prevails.  When our competitors finally realized our volumes always were real, they probably said "oh, sh..."

Back to work.

[oyvinds]

OKCoin is the first and (so far) only major Chinese bitcoin exchanges to roll out an International Site.

"Verify Your Phone", who bothers having a SIM card in their (Android) phone these days, does anyone under 60 actually pay to talk to people these days? Most of us just use WIFI and apps and have no SIM. I guess I could get a prepaid one and "verify" at OkCoin and throw it away (see how utterly pointless that is? "verify" that I am able to pay $10 at the kiosk for an anonymous pre-paid SIM-card and throw it away?) but I do not think it is worth it due to the next point:

"Verify Your Passport (need pass through level 1)"? I actually don't have one (I do have an ID, though) and I'm not sure it is worth the trouble and privacy issues of getting one just to sign up at OkCoin. The local tyrannical regime - Sweden, it is within the fascist union (EU) - requires you to give them fingerprint scans in order to get one and that is a big deal. It is very privacy-invasive. It is not like they actually need them for anything, they just want to put them in their internationally shared database (what is actually stored in the RFID now in passports is just a number which the countries they share their database with can use to look up your file - which includes your fingerprint if you submit to handing them over). There is really no reason to get one here in the fascist union anyway since you can travel anywhere within the iron curtain as long as you carry any approved ID-card.

These issues make OkCoin international a non-choice.

[desticy]

Is it really that Okcoin take over Huobi and BTCChina? ?
Why do you ask? Baffling....

China volume is hard to judge, i suggest looking at btcchina volume to gauge the true demand from china.

OKcoin taking over is hard to judge.

Yes, that's uncertainty.

In fact, there is no evidence to suggest OKcoin better than other China exchanges, except the volume, aha

[OKCoin Support]

OKCoin is the first and (so far) only major Chinese bitcoin exchanges to roll out an International Site.

"Verify Your Passport (need pass through level 1)"? I actually don't have one (I do have an ID, though) and I'm not sure it is worth the trouble and privacy issues of getting one just to sign up at OkCoin. The local tyrannical regime - Sweden, it is within the fascist union (EU) - requires you to give them fingerprint scans in order to get one and that is a big deal. It is very privacy-invasive. It is not like they actually need them for anything, they just want to put them in their internationally shared database (what is actually stored in the RFID now in passports is just a number which the countries they share their database with can use to look up your file - which includes your fingerprint if you submit to handing them over). There is really no reason to get one here in the fascist union anyway since you can travel anywhere within the iron curtain as long as you carry any approved ID-card.

Hi oyvinds,
To answer your first question: We adopt mobile verification to better protect customers' account security; we are aware that at the moment some carriers are not supported, but we are working to add new ones such as Google Voice to our list of supported carriers.
International users can apply using their ID as well, provided that they can also provide residence proof.
We implemented these measures to be in compliance with laws and regulations in jurisdictions that we operate in; it may cause temporary inconvenience, but in the long run, we believe it is advantageous to both OKCoin and our customers.

Best,
Eric
OKCoin International Customer Support
Support@okcoin.com

[cozytrade]

Surprising response to a general thread from OKcoin support as a newbie,
Welcome to bitcointalk 

OKCoin Support
Newbie
Activity: 1

OKCoin International Customer Support
Support@okcoin.com

[TinaK]

Surprising response to a general thread from OKcoin support as a newbie,
Welcome to bitcointalk 

careful
there is the official account in bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=126236 , maybe you can learn it's history through it.
notice, any other accounts are likely to be a scam

[OKCoin Support]

Surprising response to a general thread from OKcoin support as a newbie,
Welcome to bitcointalk  

careful
there is the official account in bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=126236 , maybe you can learn it's history through it.
notice, any other accounts are likely to be a scam

Hi TinaK,
The account you referred to is indeed the original OKCoin account, registered when the company still went by the old name 乐酷达 or Lekuda. We had since then switched to OKCoin (though the legal name on the companies' registration documents is still Lekuda) OKCoin International was established this July and it was only recently that we decided that we should interact more with the overseas Bitcoin community on social media.

Glad to answer any of your questions.
Eric
OKCoin International Customer Support
support@okcoin.com
...
To prove that this is a legitimate account belonging to OKCoin, I just posted a link to this thread on OKCoin's official Twitter account https://twitter.com/OKCoinBTC/status/508093005069557760.

[OKCoin Support]

Note: This is from our compliance director Richard

Oyvinds,

Thank you for taking the time to investigate the OKCoin International site. We appreciate your comments regarding Phone verification and will pass them to our Compliance team for further policy review. In terms of ID Verification - this is an important and necessary step in our International Compliance programme which is essential in esuring the longevity of our platform. However...I have some GOOD NEWS for you! If you a Swedish resident with Swedish ID card we can accept that document as proof of ID - so long we can verify the data as necessary. We are in the procees of updating our International Verifications page to make this easier for all clients regardless of location / nationality - and look forward to growing our International volumes as sucessfully as we have done our Chinese volumes!

Thanks again - and I hope you will consider verifying yourself to use our platform!

Richard

[hgerson]

The support is outstanding.

I give them that.

[shinjikenny123]

Can I trade at okcoin chinese website even if I'm not chinese? Or am I only allowed at the international version?
I think their BTC/USD market have low volume so I want to trade with their BTC/CNY market