Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
On August 22, OKX continued to set historical highs, with values once reaching $258.6, a 24-hour increase of over 30%, achieving three consecutive daily gains, rising from a low of $50 to more than five times in just 10 days, even surpassing BTC and ETH in 24-hour spot trading volume at one point. As of now, OKB's market cap is $5.094 billion, ranking 27th.
It is worth mentioning that after the price surge yesterday, OKB's price on the Ethereum chain had a 42% premium compared to the OKX platform.
Destroying 52% of the circulating supply, fixing the cap at 21 million.
The announcement on August 13 completely changed the trajectory of OKB. OKX announced the largest token burn in history: destroying 65.2567 million OKB, equivalent to 52% of the circulating supply, and permanently fixing the total supply at 21 million. This move directly pushed OKB's scarcity to the extreme, similar to Bitcoin's cap of 21 million.
Users holding the Ethereum version of OKB need to recharge their assets to OKX and complete the chain swap through 'Withdraw to X Layer.' Meanwhile, OKTChain will be gradually phased out, ceasing trading on OKX from 14:10 (UTC+8) on August 13, 2025, and will regularly exchange OKT for an equivalent amount of OKB based on the average closing price from July 13 to August 12, 2025. On-chain OKT exchanges will be supported until January 1, 2026.
After the burn, OKB's price skyrocketed 183% within 24 hours, soaring from about $50 to over $140. On August 21, OKB broke the $200 mark, reaching a historical peak of $239.91; the next day (August 22) it continued to rise, with its market cap approaching $4 billion. This series of new highs not only refreshed OKB's own record but also drove short-term rebounds in other exchange tokens like BNB.
In the face of skyrocketing prices, OKX CEO Star even personally stepped in to remind everyone: trading is risky, investment should be cautious, and avoid blindly following trends.
The cryptocurrency exchange OKX was founded by Star Xu. Currently, OKX's ecosystem includes a Web3 wallet, Layer 2 network X Layer, and a series of DeFi and GameFi applications, all of which provide solid value support for its token OKB.
OKB was initially issued as a platform token for OKX in 2018, with an initial total supply of 300 million. It is not only a discount tool for exchange fees but also used for ecosystem governance, staking rewards, and cross-chain bridging. After OKX launched its L2 network in cooperation with Polygon in 2023, OKB became the native currency on the chain.
According to historical data from OKX, OKB was constrained by early market volatility and regulatory uncertainty, with a lowest price of only $0.57 in 2019. With the arrival of the crypto bull market, OKB once climbed to $44 in 2021, but the bear market of 2022 pulled it down to below $10. Entering 2025, OKB fluctuated around $50 until the positive news of the burn announcement began its soaring journey.
Soon to be listed in the U.S.
In June this year, OKX was reported to plan an IPO in the U.S. next year.
From a financial perspective, the IPO will provide OKX with a large amount of capital for technology upgrades, marketing, and global expansion. After a successful listing, OKX can optimize its balance sheet through equity financing and enhance its parent company's valuation, which is crucial for attracting institutional investors. Additionally, the listing will bring legitimacy to its platform token OKB, possibly driving its price further up.
However, viewing the IPO purely as a financial operation may underestimate its strategic intent. OKX's return to the U.S. market and consideration of an IPO is more part of its long-term plan to enter the U.S. market. The U.S. is the largest cryptocurrency market in the world, with a vast user base and institutional capital. Through the listing, OKX can not only enhance brand awareness but also compete directly with competitors like Coinbase and Kraken.
Both have stepped up their layouts on their L2. The L2 launched by Coinbase has become one of the most active second-layer networks, and Kraken is also intensively launching its super chain ink.
The underlying reason is the shift in thinking from centralized to decentralized.
First is the diversification of revenue and profit models. Traditional CEX relies on trading fees, but L2 provides new sources of income. Coinbase, as the sole sequencer of Base, can capture trading fees significantly boosting revenue. L2 helps exchanges shift from custody fees and stablecoin interest to on-chain fees and NFT minting (such as the $500 million asset generated by Coinbase's Onchain Summer event) to cope with bear market volatility. Coinbase's latest financial report shows that, due to a sharp drop in DA costs and a surge in the number of users, after excluding $6.34 million in DA costs, the gross profit of the Base network in March was twice that of Arbitrum's entire quarter.
Second is to strengthen ecosystem building, guiding users from centralized platforms to self-custody and DeFi, expanding market reach and attracting developers to build dApps, forming a closed-loop ecosystem. By lowering barriers through L2 (such as zero gas fee experience), accelerate crypto adoption, especially under the U.S. regulatory environment, providing compliant paths to avoid SEC crackdowns.
In August of this year, OKX made significant upgrades to its Layer 2 network X Layer, integrating Polygon's Chain Development Kit (CDK), increasing transaction speed to 5000 TPS (transactions per second), and achieving near-zero gas fees. This upgrade has made X Layer an efficient Web3 infrastructure, attracting more DeFi projects and developers. OKB, as the fuel token of the network, directly benefits from the ecosystem expansion.
As of now, according to official data from X Layer, the total number of its addresses exceeds 2.18 million, with 47,000 new ones added in 24 hours. The number of addresses holding OKB exceeds 786,000, with 3,387 new ones added in 24 hours. Its ecosystem includes launchpad DYORSWAP, and its on-chain meme coin XDOG's market cap once broke 10 million dollars.
Overall, OKB's explosive rise reflects the optimism of crypto market investors towards the subsequent developments of X Layer and OKX's IPO in the U.S. In this rapidly evolving market, the story of OKB may just be the prologue to a larger wave.
