BKEX Token Delisting Controversy: "The exchange didn't mint more tokens? I don't believe it for a second."
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BKEX Token Delisting Controversy: "The exchange didn't mint more tokens? I don't believe it for a second."
On the evening of October 16, after the ZWS project launched on BKEX, it began to decline shortly after listing.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights"I've already filed a police report," said Li Zhen. Since BKEX delisted his cryptocurrency ZWS on October 16, Li Zhen has been at the forefront of维权 efforts.
According to its official website, ZWS stands for Zeus Global Distributed Weather Data Shared System—a blockchain-based solution for collecting global distributed meteorological and environmental data through socialized observation.
On the evening of October 16, shortly after ZWS was launched on BKEX, its price began to fall rapidly.
Project representative Li Zhen explained that apart from paying a listing fee worth 2 BTC (1 BTC plus tokens equivalent to 1 BTC), the team also injected 80,000 USDT as market-making funds into the exchange. However, immediately after the token went live, heavy selling pressure emerged, causing the project's market-making funds to drop from 130,000 USDT to just 30,000 USDT.
"We don’t know who was dumping, we kept buying up sell orders, but couldn’t stop the decline," Li Zhen said. According to screenshots provided by Li, the market-making account had continuously absorbed sell orders since ZWS went live. The opening price of ZWS was 0.175 USDT.
BKEX, however, issued a statement citing a significant discrepancy between the initial circulating supply disclosed by the ZWS team and the actual amount in circulation—claiming the project falsely reported only 500,000 ZWS in circulation when 1.5 million ZWS were actually deposited. To protect users, BKEX announced it had delisted the ZWS/USDT trading pair at 01:40 on October 17, 2020, and would fully compensate users who suffered losses from purchasing ZWS on the secondary market.
"We disclosed an initial circulation of over 500,000 ZWS. We injected tens of thousands more for market making. Yet at launch, hundreds of thousands of tokens suddenly appeared, as if they cost nothing, crashing our price down to one dime," Li Zhen said. "I refuse to believe the exchange didn’t mint extra tokens."
What angered Li Zhen even more was that BKEX withdrew all market-making funds and unilaterally delisted ZWS that same night—"without any communication with me."
Li Zhen revealed that BKEX Capital’s partner and the business VP had forcefully demanded discounted tokens from him. He gave two allocations: one worth 5,000 USDT at a cost of about 0.1 USDT per token to the partner, and another worth 4,000 USDT at 0.9 RMB per token to the business VP. "It was basically giving them money directly," he said.
Notably, both BKEX and BKEX Capital belong to the BK Group. Prior to the ZWS listing, BKEX Capital had invested 50,000 USDT into the project.
Currently, Li Zhen is focused on five key questions:
(1) Did the exchange issue additional tokens? Who caused the massive sell-off?
(2) Does BKEX have the right to withdraw market-making funds without prior communication?
(3) Why does BKEX claim we didn't pay the listing fee, when we clearly paid 1 BTC and ZWS equivalent to another 1 BTC?
(4) Why was the trading pair delisted without consulting the project team?
(5) Why did they recklessly disclose personal information of project team members, severely disrupting my life?
TechFlow contacted BKEX regarding these issues. The exchange responded: "Regarding token issuance, we have never conducted any unauthorized minting. We’ve already sent the project team documents containing extensive relevant data. Blockchain records are publicly verifiable—you can obtain the contract address and check it yourselves."
Chat screenshots provided by Li Zhen show that Zhu Jiang once threatened to file a police complaint against him with the Chengdu Economic Crime Investigation Detachment, while Li Zhen confirmed he has already reported the matter to criminal investigators.
Commenting on Li Zhen’s situation, Li Bang, a partner at King & Wood Mallesons, stated that under Chinese law, conducting securities or futures trading without approval from state regulatory authorities may constitute the crime of illegal business operations if it seriously disrupts market order. The exchange’s actions could potentially fall under this category.
Given the complete breakdown of cooperation, Li Zhen’s current demand is the return of the listing fee and the withdrawn funds, to safeguard the interests of investors and community members.
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