This week, the cryptocurrency exchange OKX saw a lot of market volatility as the value of its native token, OKB, dropped by around 50% quickly.
In addition to announcing a thorough internal plan to address current problems, OKX has notified its 393,100 followers on X that it will reimburse its consumers for any further losses brought on by anomalous liquidation.
“The platform will fully compensate users for additional losses caused by abnormal liquidation. The specific compensation plan will be announced within 72 hours,” the exchange stated.
The price of the OKB token as of the most recent update is $47.04, which is a 13.55% decrease over the previous week. But on January 23, the token experienced a sharp decline from $52 to $25, nearly half its value, creating a great deal of anxiety among investors.
In order to combat potential market volatility, OKX intends to put in place stronger measures. These will include fine-tuning liquidation procedures, updating pledged lending risk control guidelines, and optimizing spot leverage gradient levels.
The intention is to shield investors’ huge leverage from such market volatility. Nonetheless, the cryptocurrency community on X has voiced doubts about the circumstances, emphasizing OKB’s $10 billion market capitalization and raising questions about how a $10 million sale would cause a 50% decline in its value.
While some users highlighted the urgent need for remedial action to stop the loss, others conjectured that the drop might result from a “whale,” a word used to describe entities holding substantial quantities of a cryptocurrency token, selling their holdings.
The use of borrowed money to increase investment returns, or leverage, in the cryptocurrency space carries a significant risk along with its great rewards.
In full liquidation mode, OKX now has leverage options of 10x and 20x. Flash crashes, which are frequently brought on by the low liquidity distributed across numerous platforms, also impact the market.
When measuring the amount of capital required to move an asset’s price by 2%, OKB’s market depth of 2% falls between $224,000 and $184,000. This implies that another price cascade might be started if a sell order is placed that is greater than $224,000.
OKB is now the fourth-largest exchange token by circulation according to CoinGecko, with a market capitalization of $2.8 billion. On that day, there were notable swings in the overall cryptocurrency market as well, partially due to the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) selling Bitcoin to satisfy redemption requests from investors.
Notably, as part of its estate liquidations, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange with its own set of problems, sold off shares of the GBTC ETF valued at about $1 billion.
Meanwhile, OKX has recently concentrated on complying with legal requirements. The measures as mentioned above encompass the delisting of many privacy currencies, namely Monero, Zcash, Dash, and Horizen, on December 29, 2023, as well as the implementation of supplementary prerequisites for UK users to adhere to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations, which commenced on January 2.
