Binance CEO Blocks OKEx CEO, Escalated Rivalry or Publicity Stunt?

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has just blocked the CEO of a rival cryptocurrency exchange, OKEx, Jay Hao.

It was an unprecedented move by Binance’s boss and a decision that could trigger more heat and criticism following Jay’s recommendation.

Binance Fails, AGAIN!

A few hours ago, Binance experienced yet another mishap, a system failure that saw some traders affected and unable to access their accounts.

Trading paused due to a message broker issue. Working on it.

— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) March 4, 2020

It is yet another failure, less than two weeks when Binance paused their trading, citing a downtime in one of their matching third parties. Funds remain safe.

Changpeng blocked on Twitter Jay Hao following his criticism of Binance’s Kafka, a messaging system deployed by the exchange for affected users who had been told to reach out Binance’s help desk.

“Hey @cz_binance, technically Kafka is a message queue system for log, it’s not enough for a trading system thus the broker problem will always occur. Need help?”

Kafka Streams, it is said, is used by leading exchanges including Coinbase to “provide a perfect infrastructure to support visibility into the market and participant behavior with a very high degree of temporal accuracy, which is critical when trading such volatile instruments.”

He appeared to be lending a hand to Binance’s problem, advice which didn’t go down well with Changpeng. He was consequently blocked.

“Seems my help has been turned down right away. I thought @cz_binance believes blockchain community is open and free. My fault. ;(“

Seems my help has been turned down right away. I thought @cz_binance believes blockchain community is open and free. My fault. ;( pic.twitter.com/2u4eygDNPj

— Jay Hao (@JayHao8) March 4, 2020

He is yet to explain why, despite Binance spring back to its feet and resuming as normal.

Is OKEx Trying too Hard to Publicize their CEO?

But even as Jay tries to publicize his blocking, users complain of OKEx’s complex user interface. A user in Twitter said:

“OKEx user interface is not friendly. This is the only matter that keeps me away from OKEx. Fix this and I put my money in your exchange no joke.”

Meanwhile, Larry Cermak is outing Jay Hao’s and OKEx’s attempt to make their CEO an influencer. He claims that the exchange’s VP of Influencer Marketing is paying people for comments and retweets.

“If you’re wondering why OKEx CEO Jay Hao (@JayHao8) gets more likes/RTs on some nonsense tweets, it’s because OKEx’s VP of Influencer Marketing is literally paying people $0.50 per comment, RT and like. That’s how they want to make him “the next BIG name in crypto””

If you’re wondering why OKEx CEO Jay Hao (@JayHao8) gets quite a bit of likes/RTs on some nonsense tweets, it’s because OKEx’s VP of Influencer Marketing is literally paying people $0.50 per comment, RT and like. That’s how they want to make him “the next BIG name in crypto” pic.twitter.com/pxB1XpLSK4

— Larry Cermak (@lawmaster) March 4, 2020

But Jay has since dismissed his claim, saying he’s only interested in offering solutions whenever needed and not publicity.