OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance

The traditional financial system runs in a centralized model, whereas blockchain works similarly to the hive mind distributed system.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance

October 17, 2019 – Ever wondered how many digital asset exchanges are there in the market?

The number of crypto exchanges has been booming rapidly, recording over 20,000 exchanges globally — more than the number of ICO projects! Competition is getting more intense, and the industry is growing faster than anyone could have imagined, but OKEx has been proudly occupying the top seats on the Coinmarketcap ranking, with an average of $1 billion daily trading volume.

The OKEx Story

Who is OKEx? In 2017 when the entire crypto industry has been facing criticism on lack of transparent information, several visionaries at OKCoin started the OKEx team with the support of some shareholders from the company.

OKCoin and OKEx are essentially under OK Group, while OKCoin focuses on global compliance of crypto trading, OKEx’s major business is crypto derivatives trading. This working relationship enables both brands to contribute to the blockchain ecosystem in different areas.

So how did OKEx got its name? The word “okay” is believed to be originated from the term “zero killed”, used by American soldiers for reporting death toll during the First World War, to indicate that there were no casualties suffered after a battle. It then became a popular slang for wishing each other luck in the battles. As time goes by, nations no longer engage in armed battles, battlefields have been shifted online, financial battles on currencies or trade wars are the norm today. Most people still long for “zero killed”, and that’s what OKEx strives for — a fair, safe, and win-win trading environment for digital asset traders.

How Blockchain Redefines Traditional Finance

The traditional finance industry has been facing drawbacks: the South Sea Bubble of 1720, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the subprime mortgage crisis, the Internet bubble, etc. all showed the flaws of the traditional monetary system. This is when people started to find alternatives to the existing system.

In 1901, Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck questioned the order of the bees after observing beehives in his famous work The Life of the Bee. Kevin Kelly, a US writer, addressed the very same question in his book Out of Control, where he argued that intelligence is not organized in a centralized structure, but much more like a beehive of small simple components. Kelly later applied his view to bureaucratic organizations, intelligent computers and to the human brain, offering a critical approach to analyzing the matter.

The hive mind theory established that a complete distributed ledger system that operates in “absolute democracy”. Beehives are in a remarkably united manner, no one is in control, yet everything seems organized. The same applies to blockchain — in an often failing and centralized financial system, a peer-to-peer distributed ledger is a way out.

The traditional financial system runs in a centralized model, whereas blockchain works similarly to the hive mind distributed system. After the 2008 financial crisis, a group of disappointed cypherpunk created their own version of digital money — that’s how a new chapter of financial system with blockchain and cryptocurrency began.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance
Figure 1: Differences between cryptocurrency and traditional currency

In 2009, Bitcoin was created. Thanks to the advanced blockchain technology, the issuance of Bitcoin is decentralized through mining, and is not attached to any country or monetary system. It is an open and transparent blockchain ledger based on pure mathematics algorithms, an eye-opening financial instrument that builds trust globally between people from different geographical locations.

In 2010, we saw the first-ever Bitcoin transaction by American programmer Laszlo Hanyecz, who purchased two pizzas with 10,000 BTC. Yet down on his luck, Bitcoin price skyrocketed at an incredible rate in less than a year later. The Bitcoin ecosystem started to pick up the pace, flourished with traders, miners, various of BTC wallets and shopping sites that accept the crypto, etc. At the same time, its trading volume continued to rise, traders were desperate in need of trustable exchanges to handle the large number of transactions, but it was not a task the traditional stock exchanges could support, as crypto transactions are 24/7 and borderless.

So, a new type of exchange was born. Digital asset exchanges aim to align with traders’ value and interest by offering easy-to-use trading and risk hedging tools, such as derivatives contracts and options, to cater to their needs. OKEx was among the first to support digital asset trading, hoping to reconstruct a global trusted network to tackle the inadequacy of today’s financial system.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance

OKEx has never involved in any security breaches and has maintained the stability of the systems adhering to the TP99999 standard. Following the launch of our new order matching system this year, trading speed has been vastly improved. The OKEx Jumpstart also achieved satisfactory results for the projects launched, with an average maximum yield of 632.73%. The annualized yield for USDT in OK Piggybank has also exceeded 18%. Through regular upgrades and professional technical support, OKEx strives to offer the best trading experience to users and is constantly responding to users’ suggestions, such as the expected launch of the new USDT margin contracts and options trading on the platform.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance

Headquartered in Malta, OKEx also set up satellite offices in Hong Kong and Malaysia. Building on our experience from the traditional financial system, OKEx is creating a parallel ecology on blockchain that includes C2C trading, spot/margin trading, futures trading, OKEx Pool and Wallet.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance

However, history repeats itself. The emergence of the Ethereum smart contract created the peer-to-peer financing model known as ICO, which allows traders to bet on projects that are in the early development stage to get possible high returns. Between 2014 to 2018, the market entered a craze of ICO and recorded over 650 ICO projects, with the average USD involved pushed up to USD 25.72 million from USD 4.35 million. Yet a lot of these ICO projects did not live up to their promises, causing the investors to suffer.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance
Figure 5: Sizes of ICOs from 2014 to 2018 (source: CoinDesk)

As an industry leader, OKEx rolled out a stringent listing and delisting guidelines for its ICO projects, in order to protect our customers by curbing the bad apples within the market.

Today we live in a tokenized world where centralization and decentralization coexist. Smart contracts facilitated the development of decentralized financial products, such as stablecoins, DeFi, crypto wallets, margin lending, and insurance, etc. The DeFi ecosystem is growing at an incomparable speed in the West, but there are still 8% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to a safe banking system, especially in South Africa where 80% of the countries are facing financial chaos.

Photo for the Article - OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance
Figure 6: Unbanked population by region

OKEx is using blockchain technology to help the unbanked. We are offering comprehensive crypto trading services to the world, and giving back to the industry through our robust infrastructure. Our public chain, OKChain, is expected to launch on the test network for some final adjustments before it could be released to the public along with OKDex, our decentralized exchange.

But who are OKEx-ers? We are believers of blockchain and cryptocurrency. We believe that Bitcoin and peer-to-peer distributed ledger can rebuild human trust and empower everyone. We are proud to witness and become a part of this world-changing economy.

We value integrity and transparency. We dedicate our efforts on serving our customers with better technology and services, and we are constantly on the road of perfecting our systems, especially in safeguarding users’ assets. We never sacrifice safety for profits.

We’ve been through ups and downs on this crypto journey and had faced serious accusations of wash trading, clawbacks, flash crash, system downtime, API instability, slow transaction speed, etc. Some steamed from misunderstandings, some were due to immature technology at that time. But with every accusation, we will only grow stronger and better.

Stay tuned to our upcoming articles on the journey OKEx been through, the problems we encountered, as well as the future development of our products. We look forward to hearing from you — any suggestions are welcomed because we care.

Follow OKEx on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OKEx
Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/okexofficial/
LinkedIn: 
https://www.linkedin.com/company/okex/
Telegram: 
https://t.me/okexofficial_en
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/okex_exchange
Steemit: 
https://steemit.com/@okex-official
Website: 
https://www.okex.com

This article is published on BitPinas: OKEx: Defining Blockchain and Redefining Finance


Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.