OKB Surges 50% Alone Amidst Market Slump… Up Sharply from Previous Day

Uk Jin

Summary

The utility token OKB of global crypto exchange OKX is reportedly showing a sharp solo surge lately.
The announcement and implementation of a mass burn of OKB, amounting to 93% by OKX, are cited as the main drivers behind the spike.
While major cryptocurrencies are weak, short-term liquidity has reportedly concentrated in OKB.

The utility token OKB of the global cryptocurrency exchange OKX has recently experienced a surge. While other major cryptocurrencies are undergoing corrections, OKB is drawing market attention by continuing its strong upward trajectory alone.

As of 1:35 PM on the 21st (KST), according to CoinMarketCap, OKB is trading at $191.15, up 52.16% from the previous day. On a weekly basis, the growth rate is 80.62%—the highest among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

OKB's surge began on the 13th. At that time, OKB was priced at $46.71, but within just one hour it soared 145% to $114.8, and it has maintained its bullish momentum to the present.

The main background for OKB’s rise is the announcement of a massive OKB burn by OKX. On the 13th, OKX stated, "We will burn a total of 65 million OKB tokens held by the company in a single batch, and introduce an automatic burning mechanism using smart contracts to reduce the total supply to 21 million — the same as Bitcoin." In effect, this means 279 million tokens, accounting for a remarkable 93% of the previous total supply of 300 million, will be burned. As a result, on the 15th and 18th, OKX executed two rounds of burns, destroying 278,999,999 and 19,678,482 tokens, respectively.

OKX explained that this decision is part of its strategy to enhance the performance and expand the ecosystem of its proprietary public blockchain, X Layer. Moving forward, OKB is expected to be utilized in various use cases such as DeFi, global payments, and real-world asset (RWA) integration.

Additionally, the timing of OKB’s rise, coinciding with a downturn in major cryptocurrencies, is believed to have contributed to its price increase. Recently, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) both reached all-time highs, but quickly turned downward, declining 7.62% and 10.82% respectively over the past 7 days. Binance Coin (BNB)—the native token of Binance, OKX's competitor—only managed a 1.29% increase during the same period.

Kiminseung, head of the research center at Korbit, explained: "When major cryptocurrencies show weakness, liquidity often flows rapidly into smaller cap assets over a short period. The OKB token appears to be a case in point."

OKB