Bitcoin News Today: OKB’s Deflationary Shift Mirrors Bitcoin, Driving Record Value and Use

The recent surge in OKB, the native token of OKX, has propelled it to a record high, attracting attention to the X-Layer ecosystem and its strategic developments. On August 5, 2025, X Layer completed the “PP upgrade,” integrating the latest version of Polygon’s CDK (formerly zkEVM). This upgrade has significantly enhanced the network’s performance, increasing throughput to 5,000 transactions per second and reducing gas costs to nearly negligible levels. These improvements align X Layer with Ethereum mainnet standards, offering a more robust and developer-friendly blockchain environment [1].

As part of its broader strategic shift, OKX is decommissioning OKTChain, a network with overlapping functionalities to X Layer, and transitioning OKT holders to OKB. On August 13, 2025, OKT trading ceased on OKX Exchange, with OKT balances being converted into OKB based on an average closing price from July 13 to August 12, 2025. This conversion aims to streamline the ecosystem by consolidating gas token usage under OKB. OKTChain will remain operational until January 1, 2026, but new deposits will automatically convert to OKB [1].

A major milestone in OKB’s economic model was reached on August 15, 2025, when OKX executed a one-time burn of 65,256,712.097 OKB tokens, reducing the total supply to a fixed 21 million. This burn, part of OKB’s economic upgrade, is a step toward aligning OKB with the finite supply model of Bitcoin. The burn occurred alongside the final phase-out of OKB’s minting and burning functionalities through a smart contract upgrade, scheduled for August 18, 2025 [1]. These changes are expected to impact OKB’s tokenomics, potentially increasing scarcity and supporting its price action.

OKB’s price performance has reflected this momentum, reaching a record high of $135.12 earlier in the week, driven in part by the supply reduction announcement. As of the latest data, OKB is trading at $113.75, with a market cap of $2.39 billion, ranking it 35th among cryptocurrencies. The token has gained over 196% in the past year, outperforming the broader stock market, and remains a top 100 cryptocurrency by market capitalization [2]. Analysts attribute this strong performance to OKB’s deflationary model and its growing utility across OKX’s ecosystem, including gas payments, staking, and access to exclusive services [2].

The strategic repositioning of OKB and X Layer underscores OKX’s broader ambitions to dominate the DeFi, payments, and RWA sectors. By integrating X Layer with OKX Wallet, OKX Exchange, and OKX Pay, the firm is creating a seamless on-chain experience for users, with features such as 0-gas withdrawals and cross-chain compatibility. These enhancements are expected to drive greater adoption of X Layer, particularly in high-concurrency use cases like global payments and asset tokenization [1]. As OKX continues to expand its infrastructure and developer incentives, the ecosystem is positioned for long-term growth, supported by a deflationary token model and strategic technological upgrades [3].

Source:

[1] Announcement on the PP Upgrade of X Layer and ... (https://www.okx.com/help/announcement-on-the-pp-upgrade-of-x-layer-and-optimisation-of-the-okb-gas)

[2] OKB Price index, Live chart & USD Market cap (https://www.okx.com/en-us/price/okb-okb)

[3] OKX Burns $26 Billion Worth of OKB Tokens on Ethereum ... (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/okx-burns-26-billion-worth-154912288.html)