OKX Review: What is OKX? How to use OKX Exchange

For any crypto investors, ranging from beginners to veterans, centralized exchanges are among the first products that are used and are being used every day. At the moment, they have been an indispensable part of the crypto market.

OKX Exchange is one of them. Understanding the need to explore and use OKX, we will introduce you to this exchange deeply in detail in this article.

What is OKX?

OKX, formerly OKEx, is one of the biggest crypto exchanges on the market. Based on Coinmarketcap, OKX is currently ranked second in derivatives trading volume per 24 hours, only behind Binance.

Supporting over 600 cryptocurrencies with various features and tools (Spot, Derivatives, Options,...), OKX provides a solid infrastructure for everyone to trade assets, among other flexible options like bot trading or block trading.

At the same time, OKX also has its own blockchain called OKExChain to implement various DeFi services.

Who created OKX Exchange?

Star Xu (徐明星) founded OKX in 2017. Originally, OKX was based in China. However, due to regulatory issues, OKX has withdrawn from the China crypto market. Nevertheless, its founder, as well as the majority of the employees, are said to be Chinese.

OKX is owned by Ok Group, which also owns another crypto exchange called Okcoin.

What is OKX used for? Why use OKX Exchange?

As a centralized exchange, OKX is used mainly for trading cryptocurrencies, as well as other crypto services.

Many people choose OKX over other CEXs for its wide range of supported assets, attractive fees as well as diverse features.

How does OKX work?

As a cryptocurrency exchange, OKX works in a similar way to any other CEX. The main flywheel of OKX can be seen as:

Step 1: OKX was released with some initial markets and assets.

Step 2: OKX incentivized users to trade on their platforms. This can be done in multiple ways (Advertisement, Marketing, Incentive Program,...).

Step 3: OKX gains more users and trading volume.

Step 4: As a result, OKX receives more revenue.

Step 5: OKX grows in value, and continues to attract more users and trading volume by introducing more markets and assets.

OKX Exchange Review

Advantages of OKX

• Support a large number of cryptocurrencies & fiat currencies.
• Possess various services and instruments.
• Enable additional security options.
• Offer earning with high APY on the majority of supported assets.
• Low fees for derivatives trading.

Disadvantages of OKX

• Not available in the U.S.
• Low liquidity on some trading pairs.
• Low spot volume compared to derivatives.

Who are OKX customers?

Other than the U.S, OKX is available in more than 100 countries. You can basically see anyone all over the world using OKX.

At the same time, OKX is used by both crypto beginners and advanced traders. So being either of them, you will always find OKX relevant.

Key products of OKX

Spot Trading

Spot Trading is the most basic function that every exchange must have. It is simply the direct buying and selling of different currencies, like BTC or ETH.

Margin Trading

Margin Trading is closely similar to Spot Trading. The only difference is that Margin Trading allows you to borrow more capital to leverage your position while Spot Trading does not.

As you borrow funds in Margin Trading, be aware that you will be exposed to liquidation risks. All of your funds (including the original funds) will be lost if the borrowed asset goes down in price past a certain threshold.

When you close your Margin Trading order, you have to repay a percentage of the amount you borrow as interest. This rate depends on the platform and the asset. The longer you borrow, the more you will have to repay.

Margin Trading shares the same market as Spot Trading (Spot Market). This means that an asset in Margin Trading will always have the same price as that asset in Spot Trading.

Futures Trading

Futures are a type of derivative trading product. Futures Trading does not involve tokens or cryptocurrencies, but rather contracts that hold the value of the underlying asset. As such, users trade contracts in Futures Trading, not directly the tokens themselves.

These contracts involve an agreement between two parties to purchase (Long) or sell (Short) an underlying asset at a fixed price on a certain date. Investors open a long position if they expect the price of the underlying asset to go up, and a short position if they expect its price to go down. Futures Trading usually goes along with leverage.

For example: The price of BTC is $40,000. Bob opens a long position on BTC while Alice opens a short position, both at 10x leverage. Now the price of BTC becomes $44,000 (+10%). If both of them decide to exit their positions at this moment, Bob will profit 100% (10*10%) while Alice will be liquidated as her position is down 100%.

Futures contracts usually have an expiration date that is set when the contract is opened. However, there is a type of Futures contract called Perpetual that allows you to keep the contract for as long as you wish. For this kind of contract, you have to pay a specific Interest Rate (similar to borrowing in Margin Trading).

However, OKX has a really limited number of assets for futures trading (15 assets, specifically). OKX focuses mainly on Perpetual Swaps, which will be discussed in the following part.

Perpetual Swaps

As mentioned above, perpetual futures contracts are eternal - they exist forever without being expired. This type of trading gives more freedom to speculative investors since they can predict the increase or decrease in price sometime in the future rather than at a specific timeframe.

OKX supports perpetual trading enthusiastically with up to 125x leverage, as well as a diversity of trading pairs.

Options

FTX also supports Options contracts. For those who don’t know, the Options feature is extremely identical to Futures, with the Call Option being similar to long and the Put Option being similar to short. The key difference between the two lies in their ultimate goal.

For Options contracts, you can choose whether or not to use them at their expiration date. However, once Futures contracts hit their expiration date, their conditions have to be fulfilled. That being said, Futures contracts must be executed at some point in the future. On the opposite, Options contracts can be left intact with no problem.

As a result, investors often use Options contracts as a hedging method, whereas they optimize Futures contracts for speculative purposes.

At the moment, OKX supports 3 indexes for Options contracts: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH ), and Solana (SOL).

Trading Bot

Trading Bot is a special feature on OKX. Trading Bot provides a number of strategies, often automatically performed by bots, to make profits. Such strategies include:

• Spot grid.
• Recurring buy.
• Futures grid.
• Arbitrage order.
• Iceberg.
• TWAP.

For example, recurring buy is a scheme that automatically buys a specific asset repeatedly after a given period of time. With ETH as an asset and 7 days as a timeframe, for instance, OKX will automatically buy ETH for you after every 7 days. This tactic is also known as DCA (Dollar-cost averaging) and is specifically beneficial for long-term holders.

Other advanced strategies such as Arbitrage order are for experienced traders. Arbitrage order uses bots to take advantage of price differences between numerous markets. As such differences exist in a short period of time, the usage of bots is imperial to execute a chain of actions within only seconds.

Block Trading

Block trading is a feature for orders of high value. Such orders conducted on the market can cause massive price fluctuations and price slippage due to liquidity issues. Hence, block trading allows traders to privately negotiate orders of over $50,000 over-the-counter with market makers.

Earn

OKX provides numerous options for users to earn with their cryptocurrencies rather than leaving them idle in the wallet. There are currently 8 strategies to earn on OKX:

• Dual Investment.
• Fixed Income.
• Stablecoins.
• DeFi.
• Staking.
• Savings.
• Flash Deals.
• ETH 2.0.

OKX is well-known for its high-yield earn opportunities, so if you want to make more profits compared to simply holding the tokens, this may be the right place for you.

Crypto Mining Services

OKX supports mining services for Proof-of-Work blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum. This feature provides the infrastructure to run nodes on PoW blockchains and earn rewards without having to actually go through the lengthy setup process. All you have to do is prepare the required hardware for mining.

At the moment, 5 cryptocurrencies are supported in this service: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Decred (DCR), and Bitcoin Gold (BTG).

Wallet

Made especially for DeFi activities, OKX Wallet is a Web3 wallet that supports all kinds of dApps, ranging from DeFi, GameFi to NFT.

DEX

OKX develops a DEX aggregator for trading crypto assets. Up to this day, OKX has supported 5 blockchain networks with myriads of assets. However, it should be noted that only MetaMask and OKX Wallet are supported.

NFT Marketplace

OKX also possesses an NFT Marketplace. It supports NFT from 5 networks, including Ethereum, OKC, BSC, Polygon, and Immutable X. They also recommend minting NFTs on their chain, OKC, for the cheapest fees.

Launchpad

OKX also possesses a launchpad called JUMPSTART. Currently, OKX Jumpstart provides two types of events - Mining and On Sale.

• The “Mining” model follows a "more staking, more tokens" basis.
• The “On Sale” model adopts "Pledge + Draw" to distribute tokens. This includes position census, pledging, reward census, and reward distribution.

In order to participate in OKX JUMPSTART token sales, you need to have an OKX account and pass its level-2 KYC verification, along with an amount of OKX tokens.

What are OKX Fees?

Trading fees

OKX charges a small amount of fees for every spot, futures (including perpetual), and options orders.

OKX has arguably cheap fees for futures (including perpetual) and options orders, which is one reason why it has one of the highest trading volumes.

Deposit and withdrawal fees

Similar to the majority of centralized exchanges, OKX does not charge any deposit fees, whereas its withdrawal fees depend on each asset. Depositing cash using wire or bank transfer will cost flexible fees depending on the method you are using.

Other fees

OKX also charges fees for other services, namely its Margin Trading (Borrowing), DEX aggregator,...

How to use OKX exchange basically

Create account

To create an OKX account, first, go to the OKX website here. Click on “Sign up”.

Here you will have a few options to create an account: using either a Mobile number or Email address. You can also log in using your existing Telegram or Google account. I will sign up using an email address as an example.

Enter your email address and password, then click on “Sign up”. Note that your password has to be 8-32 characters, containing at least 1 number, 1 uppercase letter, 1 lowercase, and 1 symbol.

You will receive a code in your email. Enter the code and your account will be created.

Verify

The first thing that you should do after successfully creating an account is to verify it. On the main page, point to the human icon and click on “Verification”.

Here you will be given two options: Individual account or Corporate account. If you are a casual user, go for the first option. If you are using OKX as an employee in a company, verify it as a corporate account.

I will verify for an Individual account. Click on “Continue”.

You are now required to fill in the following information:

• Country/territory of residence.
• First and middle names.
• Last name.
• ID type.
• ID number.

After entering all of the information, click on “Submit”.

If your information is correct, you will be notified to be verified successfully.

KYC

KYC is an advanced verification process required for further features. To activate KYC, which is level-2 verification on OKX, on the main page, point to the human icon and click on “Verification”.

Continue by clicking on “Verify”.

You now have 2 options for photo verification: Webcam (using your computer directly) or Mobile Phone. Choose either of them and follow the instructions.

After completing the process, your submission will be reviewed for 2-3 days. If it is legitimate, you will be verified.

2FA (Two-factor authentication)

To improve the security of your account, Two-factor authentication is almost always needed. To enable 2FA, on the main page, point to the human icon and click on “Security settings”.

The options to enable 2FA will show up. You can use Mobile verification or an Authenticator app (such as Google Authenticator). I will use the Authenticator app as an example, specifically Google Authenticator. Click on “Set”.

After successfully linking your OKX account to the Authenticator app, turn on 2FA by clicking on “Turn on”.

Deposit

You can start depositing your cryptocurrencies into OKX. On the main page, point to “Assets” and select “Deposit”.

Select the token you want to deposit. I’ll use USDT as an example.

Select the blockchain network you are using to send your cryptocurrency from, then click on “Continue”.

A wallet address will show up. You should only send the selected token from the selected network to this wallet address. Otherwise, your tokens will end up in another wallet, and you will lose all of them.

After you send the token to this wallet address, it will take a few minutes to process the transaction. Afterwards, your tokens will appear on OKX automatically.

Withdraw

The process of withdrawing is nearly identical to that of depositing. On the main page, point to “Assets” and select “Withdraw”.

Select the token you want to withdraw. I’ll use USDT as an example.

You will have 2 options to withdraw, either On-chain (to other wallets) or Internal (between OKX accounts). If you select the latter option, there will be no withdrawal fees. If you choose the first one, there will be a small number of fees depending on the asset you are withdrawing.

Afterwards, click on “Continue”.

Fill in all the information for your withdrawal and proceed with “Continue”.

Buy & sell token

The most basic way to buy and sell tokens on OKX is spot trading. On the main page, point to “Trade” and select “Basic trading”. You can also use other features to buy and sell tokens, like Convert. 

OKX order types

On OKX, there are 6 types of market orders:

• Limit Order: Allows users to buy or sell tokens at a predetermined price. If the market price does not reach the user’s set price, the order will not be executed.
• Market Order: Is a more basic type of trade. Market Order allows users to immediately execute the order at the current market price. It is guaranteed that you can buy/sell your tokens instantly.
• Stop Order: Allows users to place a Limit or Market Order right when a specified price hits. This is made to prevent serious losses when the market crashes. Stop orders freeze your assets when placed.
• Trailing Stop: Trailing stop is a kind of stop order that tracks the market price. Its trigger price will change with the market price.
• Trigger: Places a market or limit order when a specific price level is crossed. Trigger orders do not freeze assets when placed.
• Advanced Limit: Set rules for your limit orders with three advanced limit order types: post only, fill or kill, and immediate or cancel.

For Stop Limit Order, there will be a stop price that converts the order to a sell order and a limit price that determines the selling price. This is made to prevent flash crash events that are followed by a quick market recovery, which may cause you to sell at a lower price than predicted.

How to trade on OKX Futures

Trading on OKX futures involves the use of leverage, which might be a risky tool if you do not understand it thoroughly. To trade on OKX Futures, on the main page, point to “Trade” and select “Margin trading”.

You can trade both conventional futures contracts as well as perpetual ones by choosing them in the left column. Perpetual contracts on OKX provide more versatility, so they are more highly recommended.

Before actually getting started with trading, Here are some tips on how to use leverage in Crypto in general and in futures particularly:

• Adjust leverage according to the risk/reward.
• Use stop-loss and take-profit to minimize loss and maximize returns.
• Use leverage with technical analysis to take advantage of a small rally/sell-off rather than building a long-term position.

How to use OKX trading bot

Trading bot is a special feature on OKX that you can take advantage of to make more profits. On the main page, click on “Trade” and select “Trading bot”.

There are totally 6 different strategies that you can use with OKX’s trading bot. Select the one that suits you the most, and leave the rest to the bot.

How to earn on OKX Exchange

Staking

Staking is one of the most used features on OKX. To start earning on OKX by staking, on the main page, point to “Grow” and select “Staking”.

Various staking options will show up on the screen, including the staking token, estimated APY, and term (duration). I will stake NEAR for 90 days as an example. Click on “Subscribe”.

Enter the amount of NEAR you want to stake, and click on “Subscribe”.

You can also choose other features to stake tokens, like Savings or Stablecoins & Fixed income for diversification. They all exist within the Earn sector on OKX.

Mining

One unique feature of OKX is its PoW Mining, as mentioned above. To use this feature to earn, on the main page, choose “More” and select “Pool”.

You can select the cryptocurrency to mine by clicking on “Join the pool”. For further instructions, click on “View” of the corresponding token for the detailed tutorial.

How to get OKX API

On the main page, point to the human icon and click on “API”.

Proceed by clicking on “Create V5 API Key”.

Here you will be required to enter some information on the API. Fill in all the blanks and continue with “Confirm”.

How to get OKX referral code

You can invite your friends to use OKX and receive numerous benefits as well as privileges. On the main page, point to “More” and select “Referral”.

An invite link will be created. Share this link with your friends, and if they use it, you will receive referral bonuses.

How OKX compares to other exchanges

OKX vs. Coinbase

OKX vs. Okcoin

OKX vs. Binance

OKX vs. FTX

Some questions when using OKX Exchange

How to deactivate an OKX account?

First, point to the human icon and choose “Security settings”.

You have 2 options to deactivate your account: either by freezing it (temporarily) or closing it direct (permanently). Choose the one that suits you the most.

What is OKX 's token?

OKX has its native utility token called OKB.

Is OKX safe and legit?

OKX is among the biggest CEXs at the moment. Therefore, it can be guaranteed that OKX is safe and legit.

Is OKX available in the U.S?

Currently, OKX is not available in the U.S due to regulations.

Is OKX down?

You can check the status of OKX here.

Conclusion

And that is everything you need to know about OKX. In summary, here are some highlights about OKX:

• OKX, formerly OKEx, is one of the biggest crypto exchanges on the market, especially in derivatives trading.
• As a centralized exchange, OKX is used mainly for trading cryptocurrencies, as well as other crypto services. Many people choose OKX over other CEXs for its wide range of supported assets, attractive fees as well as diverse features.
• Other than the U.S, OKX is available in more than 100 countries. You can basically see anyone all over the world using OKX. At the same time, OKX is used by both crypto beginners and advanced traders. So being either of them, you will always find OKX relevant.