Only those who dare to burn their own money have the opportunity to print new money. This afternoon, OKX announced a massive destruction of 65.25 million OKB tokens, a figure worth hundreds of millions of dollars at current prices. Following the announcement, OKB's price surged, increasing by over 100% in a short period of time, instantly becoming a focal point in the relatively sluggish market. This volatility gave many investors a sense of déjà vu. The market quickly recalled the sensational "platform coin destruction war" four years ago in 2021. Back then, exchanges used real money to buy back and destroy their own platform coins, reducing circulating supply and creating scarcity while also signaling profitability and business growth. This was a silent yet intense arms race: repeated destruction announcements drove up prices and reshuffled market capitalization rankings. Now, as OKB once again launches a large-scale token burn, market sentiment and memories are simultaneously ignited. The difference is that the industry environment in 2025 is far different from what it was then—global regulation is stricter, and the competitive model and ecosystem layout among exchanges have undergone significant changes. However, this doesn't prevent us from asking the same question: is it possible for today's platform coin market to experience a tenfold increase like the one in 2021? Revisiting the 2021 Platform Coin Burn War Let's rewind the clock back four years. From the end of 2020 to the beginning of 2021, the crypto market experienced an epic bull run. Bitcoin broke through the $20,000 mark and continued to climb, while Ethereum returned to the $1,000 range, driving a full-scale explosion in the altcoin sector. A large influx of speculative capital initially poured into low-priced, highly volatile altcoins, driving short-term gains and rapidly igniting market sentiment. Subsequently, as profits from altcoins were cashed out and repatriated, trading volume and profits on exchanges significantly increased. At this point, platform coins were primed for a subsequent surge: the high profits generated by the bull market enabled exchanges to repurchase and destroy tokens on a large scale, reducing circulating supply and creating scarcity. Furthermore, the need for market capitalization management encouraged exchanges to use destruction as a demonstration of strength to the market. Leading platforms keenly seized this opportunity, using destruction as a powerful tool in brand competition and gambled with investor confidence. Thus began a "show of strength" campaign fueled by the altcoin craze and fueled by exchange profits, marking the beginning of a period of "burning" activity, transforming platform coins from "catch-up" to "leading the market." In that destruction war, no one wanted to be a silent spectator. The frequency, scale, and variety of the actions taken by major exchanges were almost as thrilling as the price charts. To secure a higher position on the market capitalization charts, they used various methods to demonstrate their strength to the market—some launched a single, shocking attack, others opted for a steady pace to build trust, some directly engaged in a fierce battle in the secondary market, and still others relied on frequent exchanges to create a strong presence. Ultimately, four distinct factions, each representing a unique approach, gradually emerged on the battlefield: BNB, HT, OKB, and FTT. These factions not only shaped the platform coin landscape in 2021 but also provided models for later entrants to emulate and even improve upon. In that smoky destruction war, BNB was the first to fire. In April 2021, Binance burned 1,099,888 BNB in a single transaction, amounting to $595 million at the time and setting a new record for a single burn in crypto history. This not only caused a sharp drop in the circulating supply but also demonstrated to the market the concept of "speed of profit realization." CZ then issued an even more radical signal—completing the 100 million coin burn target ahead of schedule and introducing an automatic burn mechanism, making this move a sustainable and predictable positive. This large-scale and steady pace of activity allowed BNB to climb from $37 to $690 during that year's bull market, placing it among the top three in the world by market capitalization. Similar to BNB, HT's rise wasn't led by a first wave, but rather followed a pattern of "altcoins rising first, followed by platform coins." In January and February 2021, funds primarily flowed into popular altcoins. Once these funds flowed back into exchange profits and platform tokens, HT experienced a significant surge. From approximately 4 yuan in early January 2021 to a peak of nearly 39 yuan in May, the price increased nearly tenfold. OKB, however, chose a more direct approach. It eliminated the intermediate buyback process, buying and burning directly in the secondary market. This approach was like firing a bullet directly into the price curve, reducing the opportunity for speculators to ambush in advance while also creating a significant market impact at the moment of announcement. Throughout 2021, nearly 30 million OKB tokens were destroyed, sending the price soaring from the single digits to $40, firmly securing its position in the second tier. As a newcomer, FTX clearly didn't want to lose its tempo to its established rivals. It opted for a high-frequency strategy—weekly buybacks and burns, funneling all revenue from transaction fees, leveraged token redemptions, and futures funding into its arsenal. This dynamic kept it a focal point throughout the 2021 bull market, with its price peaking at $85, second only to BNB and OKB. However, this model relies heavily on trading volume, and any market reversal could deplete its liquidity. As expected, the 2022 exchange meltdown brought FTT's story to an abrupt end, its fall from star to ruin. The entire destruction war was concentrated in the first four months of 2021, from the beginning of the year to the spring. From January to April, platforms like BNB, OKB, HT, and FTT regularly announced record-breaking buyback and burn figures, often exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars in a single transaction. Combined with high trading volume during the bull market, the price of the platform tokens continued to rise, pushing market sentiment to a new peak. From July to September, the pace of destruction continued, but the scale was reduced compared to the first half of the year. Announcements were mostly aimed at maintaining expectations, and the price reaction became mild, entering a period of decline. In the fourth quarter, as BTC and ETH entered a period of adjustment, exchange trading volume declined significantly, and the scale and frequency of destruction both decreased. The news effect could no longer drive the strong upward movement of platform tokens, and the popularity quickly subsided. Ultimately, this nearly year-long arms race not only left a precipitous peak and trough on the price curve, but also reshaped the landscape of exchange-denominated tokens. BNB, with its dual advantages of firepower and pace, firmly established itself as the undisputed leader; OKB, with its robust mechanisms and decisive execution, firmly held a second-tier position. While FTT, once unrivaled during the bull market, collapsed in 2022 due to its over-reliance on trading volume and external conditions, becoming a cautionary tale in the history of exchange-denominated tokens. The aftermath of this war continues to this day, providing a sobering lesson for those who come after it: in the world of exchange-denominated tokens, it's crucial to not only survive but also to endure. The platform coins that skyrocketed in 2025 The price growth of platform coins is often not a linear climb, but rather a "step-by-step" jump: seemingly calm at ordinary times, but once a key event (large-scale burns, major product launches, license issuance, or ecosystem explosion) is triggered, the price will rise sharply in a short period of time, then establish a new price center at a new level. In past cycles, these "super-explosive" platform coins almost all have a common script: First, lay the groundwork—preemptively laying the foundation in terms of ecosystem, products, and compliance; then, trigger the explosion—igniting the market with a large-scale action, such as BNB's Alpha launch, OKB's large-scale burns, and BGB's dual ecosystem closed loop; then, capitalize on the momentum to expand—continuously releasing new positive news at new highs to maintain popularity and capital inflow. In 2025, we'll see BNB, OKB, and BGB all demonstrating this logic in their own ways. 1. BNB: From approximately $250 at the beginning of 2023 to over $800 in 2025, BNB has more than tripled in two years. This round of price increases was largely driven by Binance Alpha. Over the past six months, Binance Alpha has become the largest trading platform in the cryptocurrency world. On the Alpha page, users can participate in early-stage IDOs by completing tasks and staking BNB, gaining a chance to win token draws before the project launches. The monthly returns retail investors can earn far exceed the average salary of an average white-collar worker. However, Alpha isn't an isolated product; it connects the entire BNB Chain ecosystem. Alpha not only provides tasks and lottery opportunities, but also serves as a gateway for users to explore the BNB Chain. Users are shifting from passively hoarding coins to offset fees to becoming true "BNB Chain natives"—learning to use various on-chain ecosystems like Binance Wallet and Pancakeswap for swaps, limited partnerships, lending, and even meme creation and contract trading, becoming true "BNB Chain natives." This shift in operational habits has been a key driver of BNB's growth during this cycle. Since the beginning of 2024, BNB Chain has not only seen a surge in the popularity of core projects like Pancake, Lista, Four.meme, and Aster at the protocol layer, but has also seen a simultaneous rise in fundamental network metrics. This chart shows the evolution of each public chain's share of weekly DEX trading volume, with the dark blue area representing BNB Chain. Data source: Dune. This stacked area shows that BNB Chain has leapt from a "steady follower" to the public chain with the largest trading volume over the past year. Furthermore, the Maxwell upgrade has also brought new breakthroughs. As BNB Chain's third core network upgrade this year, block times have been further reduced from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds, resulting in even faster on-chain responsiveness. To a certain extent, BNB has evolved from a platform coin backing to an ecosystem value carrier, achieving absolute dominance in the multi-chain landscape. From a broader financial market perspective, BNB has also attracted major institutions in traditional circles, who are converting billions of dollars in strategic bets into on-chain reserves and capital growth, making it a prime choice for accumulating US stocks. This evolutionary path from platform equity to the ecosystem's primary currency, and then to institutional reserve assets, has been the primary reason for BNB's continued growth over the past two years. 2. OKB: From 2023 to 2025, OKB's price rose from $28 to $110. During these two years, OKX focused on two key areas: strengthening its global licensing strategy and accelerating the development of Web3 tools, such as the OKX Wallet. In 2023, OKX established a subsidiary in France, a representative office in Turkey, secured regulatory approvals in Dubai, and actively issued reserve certificates to enhance transparency. From 2024 to 2025, OKX rapidly expanded its licensing portfolio, obtaining the Singapore MAS Payment Institution License and the Dubai VARA full operating license, becoming one of the first crypto trading platforms to receive the MiCA license. During this same period, OKX established its wallet product as a strategic core, transitioning from a "platform function" to a decentralized gateway. In 2022, it launched a Web3 wallet, supporting multi-chain asset management, NFTs, and DApps. In 2023, the wallet added an "authorization history analysis" feature to enhance user security and control. Its most significant growth occurred during the Bitcoin ecosystem's explosive growth, becoming a core channel for the Ordinals trading market. In 2023, its trading volume exceeded $1 billion, capturing a 91.7% market share. Subsequently, OKX launched the standalone OKX Wallet application, supporting over 130 blockchains, with cumulative daily trading volume exceeding $1 billion, 500,000 new wallets added daily, and total managed assets exceeding $44.5 billion. 2025 saw OKB's most significant growth, particularly on the day of the "Massive OKB Burn" announcement. This was the 29th and final OKB burn in OKB's history, a massive undertaking rarely seen in the cryptocurrency world. On August 13th, OKX announced a one-time destruction of over 65 million OKB from historical repurchases and reserves. It also implemented a smart contract to automatically destroy all future OKB entering black hole addresses, completely halting manual burns. This meant that the total supply of OKB would be permanently locked at 21 million, matching Bitcoin's scarcity. The announcement of the "Massive Burn" instantly ignited the market. At 2:15 PM, OKB began to rise rapidly, reaching $99.27 at 2:40 PM, a 112% increase; the price doubled in just 25 minutes. Subsequently, as the bull-bear tussle intensified, OKB continued its upward trend, reaching a high of $134 around 3:00 PM, with a maximum single-hour increase of 186%. A total of 29 OKB burns were carried out. This massive burn was accompanied by the X Layer upgrade, the second pillar of OKX's public chain strategy. X Layer is its zkEVM Layer 2 network, built on Ethereum and powered by Polygon CDK. The upgraded X Layer will increase throughput to 5,000 TPS, reduce gas costs to near zero, and enhance security and compatibility with the Ethereum mainnet. OKB will continue to serve as X Layer's sole gas and native token, providing core value support for transaction fees, on-chain governance, and ecosystem incentives. This means that OKB's on-chain demand will be further tied to the platform's external value, transitioning from a pure CEX platform coin to a decentralized "public chain gas." This shift also hints at rumors of an OKX US IPO. Trump's inauguration opened up a gap for IPOs in the crypto industry, making OKX's consideration of a US IPO both unexpected and expected. On June 23rd, crypto journalist Yueqi Yang of The Information reported that cryptocurrency trading platform OKX, after returning to the US market in April of this year, is considering a US initial public offering (IPO). BiyaPay analysts believe this is a necessary stage in the industry's development: the past "unbridled" growth is no longer sustainable. A compliant listing is a rational choice if the company is to win the trust of global financial institutions and users. While the involvement of regulators like the SEC will impose additional constraints, it will also drive the entire crypto industry towards transparency, stability, and capitalization. For OKB, this will be a reshaping of its identity. To mitigate the limitations of its securities attributes imposed by US stock listing requirements, OKB must serve as a gas provider on the public chain, transforming itself into a part of the decentralized ecosystem and minimizing its ties to CEXs. 3. BGB: From $0.20 at the beginning of 2023 to $5 in 2025, BGB has experienced a nearly 25-fold increase in just two years. Bitget's approach is more similar to OKX's. BGB's rise isn't the result of a single event, but rather the continuous accumulation of platform strategy, ecosystem integration, and expanded usage scenarios. In 2025, Bitget's core focus on its platform coin will be accelerated destruction and repurchases using revenue. Previously, BGB destruction was mostly conducted on a quarterly basis, but this year they've increased the frequency and are using a portion of their transaction fee revenue to repurchase BGB, which then enters the destruction pool. This transparent and sustainable deflationary mechanism directly links the platform's trading activity to price expectations. At the same time, Bitget launched a dual model: Launchpad + Staking Mining. Launchpad offers early access to early-stage projects, allowing users to stake BGB to earn quotas. Staking Mining combines CEX users' retained assets with on-chain mining revenue, making BGB holdings no longer just a "hoarding" strategy but a continuously generating asset. More importantly, Bitget has incorporated its own wallet into this closed loop. After the Bitget Wallet upgrade, BGB is now interoperable with the points system, allowing wallet users to directly earn and spend BGB points when engaging in on-chain swaps, cross-chain transactions, and participating in DeFi. This step extends BGB's use cases beyond exchanges, extending the platform coin's value anchor from within a single CEX to real-world on-chain demand. This "internal and external" approach has enabled BGB to forge an independent path among CEX platform coins: internally, it uses Launchpad and staking to lock in liquidity; externally, it uses wallets and on-chain points to create consumption scenarios, supplemented by frequent burns to support its value. Judging from its price curve, BGB isn't driven by single positive factors, but rather by consistently raising market expectations through new initiatives implemented quarterly. This likely explains why, among similar platform coins, BGB has been able to maintain a high beta through 2025 while maintaining a steady upward trend. The platform coin market won't be a truce. Looking back at 2021, the "burning war" used real money to drive market capitalization and shape the landscape. Four years later, platform coins remain exchanges' most potent weapon—they can both create scarcity and FOMO (Fear of Momentum) and deliver real value in ecosystem expansion. The difference is that platform coins in 2025 are no longer simply fee discount vouchers; they are complex assets fighting on three fronts: global licensing, on-chain ecosystems, and capital markets. The respective growth paths of BNB, OKB, and BGB exemplify this cycle of evolution. Will this mark the beginning of a new CEX "arms race"? No one can definitively answer. But what is certain is that there's never a true truce in this race—whoever can sustain the momentum, hold on, and run faster will be the one to leave their competitors behind in the next market cycle. After all, in the increasingly involuted CEX market, what's important isn't just destroying circulation to boost coin prices, but also creating opportunities for competitors.
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