The beginning of the consolidation? OKEx delists 42 trading pairs

There are constant whispers—and sometimes outright shouts—that the cryptocurrency industry will eventually be limited to only a small handful of options. This will be based on those coins that have showed more usefulness to the entire financial ecosystem and will eventually lead to the removal of the majority of the more than 1,000 digital currencies that are now available. This is going to be the next step in crypto’s maturity as it continues to evolve into an acceptable currency and could already be on its way.

Hong Kong’s OKEx exchange has announced that it will delist 42 trading pairs as of October 31. It explained that the decision to remove the coins was based on the fact that they have poor liquidity and/or low trading volumes. The company’s Head of Operations, Andy Cheung, stated, “Being listed is not the final step, keeping up high productivity and efficiency plays a major role to success. Housekeeping is important, our main responsibility should be to maintain a robust environment in the market to expand and provide the most suitable trading experience to our users.”

Getting listed is not final. Maintaining a good performance is the key to success. @OKEx_ , our utmost responsibility is to ensure a robust ecosystem for our projects to grow and the best trading environment for our users to experience.https://t.co/SpHrlMl1CX

— Andy Cheung (@AndyC0125) October 26, 2018

OKEx users who have holdings in the target coins are recommended to cancel any pending orders. If they’re not, the exchange said that it will cancel the orders and credit the asset(s) to the user’s trading account.

The company further indicated that only the trading pairs that have low trading volumes and/or weak liquidity will be delisted, but the underlying tokens will remain. Cheung added, “We have to admit that there are projects and projects in the blockchain space, and some are underperforming against our expectations. That’s why we had to take some action to deal with this problem.”

Although the exchange points out that it isn’t delisting the coins themselves, it shows that the crypto space is closely watching activity and is willing to take the necessary measures to reduce access to those coins that do not perform per certain standards. This will, eventually, lead to them dropping off the radar completely.

OKEx is the second-largest crypto exchange by trade volume, according to CoinMarketCap. It has a 24-hour volume of $507.94 million and a seven-day volume of $2.62 billion. It falls behind Binance, which has a 24-hour volume of $750.48 million and a seven-day volume of $3.63 billion.