OKB (OKB)

OKB (OKB) is the exchange token of OKX, one of the largest centralized exchanges by trading volume. It began as a discount and rewards token for the exchange's customers and has since become the fee-paying coin of X Layer, the blockchain network OKX runs. Since August 2025 its total supply has been fixed at 21 million tokens, a number deliberately chosen to echo the cap on Bitcoin (BTC).

OKB belongs to the same family of exchange-issued cryptocurrencies as BNB (BNB) and Cronos (CRO): its value depends heavily on the health of a single company. The token is separate from X Layer itself, which is a network, and from OKT, the coin of an older OKX chain that has been wound down.

Think of a large department store that sells its own store tokens. Shoppers who pay with the tokens get money off, and the store also runs a private shuttle bus to its car parks; the only fare the bus accepts is the store token. Over the years the store has bought back tokens with part of its takings and shredded them, so fewer exist.

OKB works the same way. Traders on OKX use it for lower fees and access to token sales, and anyone moving money on X Layer pays the network's small charges in OKB. In 2025 the store announced it had shredded most of the remaining tokens and removed the machine that prints new ones, so the number in existence can no longer grow. The catch is that the tokens are only as useful as the store and its shuttle.

OKEx, the exchange founded by Star Xu (Xu Mingxing), issued OKB in 2018 as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum Blockchain, with one billion tokens created. In February 2020 the exchange burned 700 million unissued tokens and said it would not create more, leaving a little under 300 million. Later that year, from October to late November 2020, OKEx froze customer withdrawals because one of the holders of its private keys was assisting Chinese police, an episode that shook confidence in the token.

The exchange renamed itself OKX in January 2022. It launched X Layer in April 2024 as a layer 2 network on Ethereum, built with Polygon's development kit and using zero-knowledge rollup technology.

On 13 August 2025 OKX announced an overhaul of the token. It burned 65,256,712 OKB held from past buybacks and its own reserves, upgraded the token contract to remove both minting and manual burning, and made OKB the gas token of X Layer after a network upgrade. The same plan halted trading of OKT and set out a schedule to convert remaining OKT into OKB before the OKTChain network closed at the start of 2026. The change in supply is simple arithmetic:

• $S_{\text{before}}$ is the total supply before the burn.
• $B$ is the number of tokens destroyed.
• $S_{\text{after}}$ is the total supply that remains.

With about 86,256,712 OKB in existence and 65,256,712 burned, $S_{\text{after}} = 86{,}256{,}712 - 65{,}256{,}712 = 21{,}000{,}000$. Because the contract can no longer mint or burn, the supply figure is now fixed rather than deflationary. The token's price rose sharply in the days after the announcement.

• Trading fees. Holding OKB on OKX lowers the trading fees a customer pays.
• Network fees. OKB pays the gas fees for transactions and smart contracts on X Layer.
• Token sales and rewards. OKX has used OKB as the entry ticket for its token launch and earning programmes.
• Investment. Many holders buy OKB as a bet on the growth of OKX as a business, a reason that brings its own risks.

On 24 February 2025 Aux Cayes FinTech Co., the Seychelles company that operates OKX, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Prosecutors said that from 2018 to early 2024 the exchange served US customers despite a stated ban and did not keep an adequate anti-money laundering programme under the Bank Secrecy Act, including weak checks on who its customers were. OKX agreed to pay more than $504 million, made up of a fine of about $84.4 million and forfeiture of about $420.3 million, and to keep an outside compliance consultant until 2027. The company said no employees were charged and that no customers were harmed. Outside the United States, OKX holds licences or registrations in several places; in January 2025 its Malta subsidiary received authorization under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets rules, letting it serve customers across the European Economic Area.

Critics of exchange tokens point to concentration: OKX decides the token's rules, and a single announcement in 2025 removed three-quarters of the supply. The token's usefulness depends on OKX staying open to customers in many countries.

• OKX
• X Layer
• US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York: OKX guilty plea