OKB, the native token of cryptocurrency exchange OKX, surged by 15% on August 20, 2025, reaching a high of $140. This represents a 220% increase from its lowest point this year, bringing its market capitalization to approximately $2.9 billion with a daily trading volume of $330 million. The rally is a continuation of an uptrend that began the previous week following a major announcement from OKX.
The primary catalyst for the price surge was a historic token burn event and a significant technological upgrade. On August 13, OKX executed a single-instance burn of 65.26 million OKB tokens from its historical buybacks and reserves. This action permanently reduced the total circulating supply and established a new, immutable hard cap of 21 million tokens. A subsequent smart contract upgrade disabled any future minting or burning capabilities, cementing the token's scarcity.
Concurrently, OKX completed a major migration of its ecosystem. Over 90% of OKB tokens successfully transitioned from Ethereum's Layer 1 to the newly launched "X Layer," OKX's zkEVM-powered Ethereum Layer-2 solution. The X Layer upgrade significantly enhanced the network's capabilities, boosting throughput to 5,000 transactions per second (TPS), reducing gas costs to near-zero, and improving security and full Ethereum compatibility. OKB now functions as the native gas token for this new chain. As part of this consolidation, OKX also announced the phasing out of its older OKTChain due to overlap with X Layer, with a full decommissioning planned for January 1, 2026.
Despite the powerful fundamental drivers, technical and market indicators are flashing warning signs of a potential reversal. Data from CoinGlass shows that the eight-hour funding rate for OKB plunged to -0.011%, its lowest point since August 17. A negative funding rate is a classic signal that traders in the perpetual futures market are anticipating the spot price to fall in the near future, as it means short position holders are paying long position holders.
Technical analysis suggests the token may be entering a precarious phase. Applying Wyckoff analysis, the recent surge is seen as part of the "markup phase," which could soon be followed by a "distribution phase" leading to a sharp decline. Other indicators, including the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Stochastic Oscillator, show that OKB has become highly overbought. The price has also moved far above its 50-day and 100-day moving averages, increasing the risk of a mean reversion. If a correction occurs, analysts project a potential crash to a key support level at $65, which was the swing high from November of the previous year.
A longer-term potential catalyst remains an unconfirmed rumor of an OKX initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, potentially following the successful public listings of Circle and Bullish. However, for now, the combination of extreme bullish momentum and emerging bearish derivatives data creates a highly uncertain short-term outlook.