When a 2020 trade locks your $400K in 2025

One of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, OKX, has refused to return a client’s assets worth $400,000 — citing events that happened five years ago.

You can read the full story, including screenshots of the client’s conversation with the exchange, here. But I want to highlight one particular detail.

In 2025, the exchange asked the client to provide documents explaining their trading methodology and choice of pairs for trades made on August 14, 2020. Then it blocked the account — along with the funds — over alleged prohibited activity.

I remember that day well. CRV had just appeared out of nowhere, and its status was uncertain: was it a scam, or the real Curve Finance token? The price was insanely volatile, and only daredevils or insiders would dare trade it.

• If the trader really was engaged in forbidden trading activity back then, would he have left hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in that same account for five years? Surely he would have withdrawn everything immediately, before anyone noticed.
• Or maybe he did withdraw — and later, seeing that the exchange never raised any objections, decided to deposit again? Exactly what the exchange had been waiting for?

Either way, it shows how dangerous it can be to deposit large sums into exchange accounts. A single old trade could come back years later and lock up your money.

For crypto swaps, it’s much safer to use rabbit.io. We don’t require accounts, and no two of your swaps are linked — unless you choose to use the same wallet addresses yourself.