On January 23, around 11:00 Kyiv time (12:00 MSK), the price of OKX’s exchange token, OKB, plummeted from $51 to $25, a drop of 51%.
Approximately 15 minutes later, the asset’s price recovered to $45, where it remains at the time of writing.
The reasons for the situation remain unknown. OKX CEO Minxing Xu noted the high volatility and stated that the company has launched an investigation into the incident, with details to be disclosed later.
Our team is investigating the recent okb price volatility. We will report to the community later. pic.twitter.com/UI9uPgQfA5
— Star (@star_okx) January 23, 2024
OKX representatives explained the OKB price crash as a result of the liquidation of several large positions with insufficient collateral.
“Combined with market conditions, the price of OKB fell, leading to the liquidation of lending positions, leveraged trades, and cross-currency operations, ultimately causing the price to crash to $25,” the company added.
The platform has pledged to fully compensate losses and optimize trading operations. A plan will be presented within 72 hours.
According to CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, “no notable outflows” of assets from OKX’s main reserves have been observed so far.
$OKB, @okx ‘s exchange token, fell by 25% in the past 30 minutes, with no notable outflows from major asset reserves so far.https://t.co/PQ06Wsix82 pic.twitter.com/JsNnvuoDVA
— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) January 23, 2024
The analytical platform Spot On Chain highlighted that the price drop might be linked to a “suspicious” deposit totaling 176,154 OKB (~$8 million) into OKX from 10 previously inactive crypto wallets.
?? $OKB token suddenly fell sharply (40%) and our system marked ten dormant whales depositing 176,154 OKB ($9.58M) to OKX 7 days ago.
➡️ All 10 wallets received a total of 176,154 $OKB 4 years ago (20 Feb 2020) and had no action after that.
➡️ They deposited all tokens to OKX… pic.twitter.com/EQmiHOinmd— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) January 23, 2024
The transactions occurred on January 16. Experts suggested that all the listed addresses belong to one individual, but could not establish a clear link to the token’s crash.
Launched in 2018, OKB is a utility token within the OKX platform ecosystem. Holders of the asset receive trading fee discounts and various VIP privileges on the exchange.
In December 2023, the decentralized exchange OKX suffered a $430,000 exploit due to a suspected leak of an administrator proxy server’s private key.