OKX Burns $26 Billion Worth of OKB Tokens on Ethereum—Here’s Why

Crypto exchange OKX burned—or effectively destroyed—279 million Ethereum-based OKB tokens valued at nearly $26 billion on Friday as part of a major slash to its native token supply. 

The burn marks one of the final steps in OKB’s “economic upgrade,” reducing the total supply of OKB from 300 million to 21 million, matching the finite supply standard of Bitcoin, and phasing out its connections to Ethereum mainnet. 

News of the token burn and supply cut first circulated on Wednesday, sending OKB’s price up more than 100% on the day, briefly creating a new all-time high mark of $135.12. 

The token has since retraced to $90.36, but remains the largest weekly gainer among top 100 crypto tokens by market cap, according to data from CoinGecko. 

OKB—which also acts as the native gas token for the exchange’s Ethereum layer-2 network, X-Layer—will have its smart contract upgraded, removing minting and burning functionalities for the token on August 18. 

The tokenomics modification is part of a broader strategic refocus for OKX, which aims to elevate X-Layer. Earlier this month, the network integrated the latest version of Polygon’s chain development kit, or CDK, enabling improved throughput and reduced transaction costs.

The firm aims to make it a leading network for DeFi, payments, and real world asset (RWA) tokenization. With its focus on X-Layer, the firm is discontinuing its OKT Chain and the OKT Chain token (OKT), which also jumped around 100% earlier this week amid news it would be automatically converted into OKB. 

Earlier this year, OKX created a new regional headquarters in the U.S. as it began its operations expansion, allowing U.S. residents to use its exchange and OKX Wallet. In June, a report from The Information indicated that the firm planned to go public in the U.S., joining the likes of eToro, Coinbase, and Bullish among publicly traded crypto exchanges.