Crypto Exchange OKEx Tackles Small Balances With New Offering

The popular crypto exchange OKEx recently announced a new feature that allows its users to convert small balances to the firm’s proprietary token OKB. As OKEx announced on April 7, the new product will allow its users to convert all the crypto asset balances worth less than 0.001 Bitcoin (BTC) which is $7.38 at press time into OKB.

The upper limit for conversion value is 0.01 BTC ($73.84 at press time) and there is no limit on conversion time but the conversion will be only available when the price fluctuates within 5%. Recently, a trader told the media that this small balance handling is an important feature for long-term traders because it prevents users from wasting resources when trading different assets.

He said that small balances are a big issue on crypto exchanges since they are funds that cannot be used” to trade. The latest Binance news show that there is a similar feature letting users convert small balances (often called dust) into the proprietary token Binance Coin (BNB). When the feature first launched in late April 2018, the co-founder of Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao joked on Twitter, “I hear the team has built a broom, who wants it?”

In a February 16 blog post, the crypto exchange OKEx explained some of the advantages that OKB holders have on its exchange, stating:

“There is only one trading fee discount program for OKB holders on OKEx, in which users only need to hold 500 OKBs to enjoy fee discounts. To receive the maximum discount, users only need to hold a maximum of 2000 OKBs.”

The CEO of OKEx, Jay Hao, urged traders to avoid speculating on OKB and stated that “A principle that I recommend all our users stick to is that if you do not fully believe in the long term growth of OKEx, then please do not trade OKB.”

Over the past year, the crypto exchange OKEx was in the cryptonews a lot and grew a lot within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. As the media reported at the end of March, OKEx recently became the world’s top Bitcoin Futures exchange by daily trading volume, overtaking the industry veteran BitMEX.

According to Hao, the competitors of OKEx are probably not appreciating the growth of his platform – earlier this year, the blamed them for denial of service attacks against the exchange.