Major cryptocurrency exchange OKEx has changed its name to OKX as it becomes the world's second-biggest cryptocurrency trading platform by spot trading volume to reflect its transformation into a financial services platform.
What Happened: OKEx representatives said in an announcement shared with Benzinga that the old name hinting at the word "exchange" limits its image.
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The reason is that the firm now runs a platform including passive earning services, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, decentralized application (DApp) discovery tool and DeFi ecosystem MetaX. The company's CEO Jay Hao commented:
"OKX is moving beyond the standard centralized exchange model to give our customers an end-to-end cryptocurrency experience."
While the representatives have not mentioned it, the platform changing its name to OKX clearly also pays into the most recent branding trends. As BetterMarketing points out in its "why do brands keep dropping vowels?" article, there is now a long list of companies that started "selling off vowels."
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According to CoinMarketCap data, OKX is the second exchange with the highest volume — if we exclude two exchanges whose provided data is believed to be unreliable, according to the data platform.
The exchange facilitated over $5 billion worth of spot trades over the last 24 hours in addition to over $14 billion of derivatives volume — making it the second most popular crypto derivatives trading platform, according to CoinMarketCap.