David Edwards
OKX CEO and founder Star Xu has firmly defended the crypto exchange’s compliance procedures following accusations from Tron founder Justin Sun. The dispute stems from a recent security breach of Tron’s official X (formerly Twitter) account, which led Sun to claim that OKX failed to act on a law enforcement directive to freeze stolen digital assets.
Sun’s public objection was dismissed by Xu, who emphasized that OKX follows formal legal procedures and is unable to respond to unofficial demands. In reference to Sun’s position as CEO of rival exchange HTX, Xu said, “We can’t freeze a customer’s funds based on a social media post or verbal communication.”
Xu continued by saying that the law enforcement cooperation team from OKX had checked all email channels, including spam folders, and had not discovered any requests of such nature. “We haven’t received any official correspondence regarding this matter,” he noted.
According to Sun’s original allegations, which have since been removed from X, a “relevant law enforcement agency” submitted a “freeze notice” to OKX’s compliance staff. Since the compromised monies did not belong to him, he claimed that his acts were in the best interests of the community rather than his own personal recovery.
On May 3, the Tron DAO X account breach was made public. Unauthorized posts were made, a malicious smart contract address was shared, and dubious accounts were followed throughout the attack. On May 2, Tron issued a warning to users to ignore any direct messages they received from its account.
Xu urged Sun to produce written evidence of the purported law enforcement request, including timestamps and recipient information, in response to his claims.
This event contributes to an increasing number of security lapses that target well-known accounts on X that are connected to cryptocurrency. Notably, in March, attackers manipulated the positions of KAITO tokens on Kaito AI, a crypto analytics platform powered by artificial intelligence, and its founder, Yu Hu. Other recent victims include UK MP Lucy Powell and meme token launchpad Pump.fun, whose accounts were compromised to advertise bogus cryptocurrency schemes.
These frequent attacks draw attention to enduring weaknesses in the social media infrastructure that significant participants in the digital asset market rely on.
