A look back at what we built this year to create an easier and faster crypto experience on OKCoin
In 2020, we welcomed many new people into crypto! These new customers have helped us better understand how to make okcoin.com even easier to use, and to make it faster to go from zero to crypto.
The last several months have been particularly busy with new product and listing announcements that have supported global crypto adoption.
Here’s a look at our 2020 product updates:
Faster onboarding (from signup to trading)
We’ve removed hurdles and barriers that can make it challenging to sign up and get started with crypto. We improved our website and redesigned the signup flow. Our profile verification process has been simplified with additional security features.
Most importantly, we’ve made it easier to fund your account and start trading or placing an order. We introduced Instant Deposits for US customers to make it faster to fund your account without the long balance settlement periods. It now takes under 2 minutes to start trading on a new account. On OKCoin, you can also make deposits and withdrawals with no associated fees.
Recurring buy and sell (set and forget)
You can now automate the growth of your crypto portfolio with our recurring buy feature. Recurring buy lets you set a buy order to add bitcoin to your portfolio in order to build your position over time. This makes it easy for you to dollar-cost average (DCA) your position, reducing the impact of volatility on your purchases over time. With DCA, you can take out the stress of timing the market, and build a position how you want, when you want. Read more about recurring buy.
Fast, easy, and reliable crypto investments are at your fingertips. Don’t miss the bull run, start building your crypto portfolio!
Earn up to 20% APY* on your crypto
We recently introduced Earn, a high interest tool that makes earning up to 20% annual percentage yield (APY)* accessible to all with no additional fees. With Earn, investors can deposit their stablecoin assets into DeFi permissionless liquidity protocols. Protocols available in Earn include Curve, YFI, and Compound.
OKCoin is the first licensed exchange to simplify DeFi and make it accessible for all investors — now you can deposit into DeFi protocols in just 2 clicks! We’re also the first to offer DeFi without fees; OKCoin covers the transaction (gas) fees that other platforms typically charge to access these protocols. OKCoin supports five stablecoins that can be deposited into Earn. Learn more about stablecoins.
*APY rates are variable and subject to hourly change.
New digital assets
2020 saw the addition of six new DeFi assets listed on OKCoin: Compound (COMP), Polkadot (DOT), Yearn.finance (YFI), Uniswap (UNI), DFI.Money (YFII), and Chainlink (LINK), as well as the addition of four other assets to our trading platform: Dai (DAI), Celo (CELO), Celo Dollars (cUSD), and USDK (USDK).
In early December we announced that we will be the first US exchange to list the Stacks token, STX. Look for our listing announcement on January 15th, 2021 to start trading STX.
New payment channels for funding your account fast
2020 saw the addition of seven new payment channels across client accounts. For both individual and institutional customers, our new Instant ACH and PrimeX channels with Prime Trust provide fast and secure methods for accessing funds, as does our implementation of domestic and international wire payments with Signature Bank.
For our international individual customers, this year we made it possible to fund your account using your Visa credit or debit card with USD and EUR. We also recently added Etana, a new payment channel and secure custody solution that allows European Union customers to fund their accounts using either Euros or US dollars.
Institutional customers can also fund their accounts using Signature Bank’s Signet channel (USD) and Silvergate’s SEN channel.
View all of our payment channels.
Dashboard and navigation refresh
Our new portfolio view and dashboards make it easy for any investor to build and manage a portfolio. The main interface has been optimized to give you all the important tools in one place.
Your OKCoin account dashboard has everything you need:
- View the crypto markets,
- Place trades,
- Manage your balance,
- Review your order history,
- Set up recurring buy to DCA your crypto positions,
- Transfer funds between accounts and deposit and withdraw, and
- Receive OKCoin’s latest listing announcements.
New global markets and 17 new US State licenses
In October, we expanded operations to Singapore, opening an office to serve customers in Singapore and Brunei. Customers can trade Singapore dollars pairings for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and US dollar pairings BTC, ETH, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) on the OKCoin exchange. Read the press release.
We’ve been working to expand our presence in Europe with a focus on the Netherlands. With a rich financial history and the genesis of stock market trading, the Netherlands provide an exciting market for OKCoin to serve.
We have also expanded our license to Canada, now offering Canadian customers a fully-regulated platform to now trade in and out of crypto assets using USD.
In 2020 we also received 17 new state licenses in the US including Alaska, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. OKCoin is licensed or permitted to offer services in 44 states. View the full list of OKCoin’s areas of operations.
Investing in the future of crypto
Over the course of the year, we have provided four Open-Source Developer Grants and extended one of our recipients a second grant. Our recipients include Fabian Jahr, BTCPay Server, Amiti Uttarwar, and Marco Falke. Collectively, our grants have totaled over US $500,000, allowing these developers to make meaningful privacy, security, and scalability contributions to Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin ecosystem.
We joined the Celo Alliance this year to further our commitment to developing a responsible financial ecosystem for digital assets. The Celo Alliance for Prosperity is focused on advancing financial inclusion in developing countries through decentralized mobile apps.
We also announced the OKCoin Oracle, a secure price feed providing DeFi protocols with a trusted source of signed market data.
2020 began as a challenging year with many unknowns. What we’ve learned is that the crypto industry performs well under pressure, and so does our team. At OKCoin, we took 2020 as an opportunity to improve our product and experience for customers in order to make crypto better available and grow adoption. As the world continues to change, so will we, making financial autonomy more accessible and crypto easier for anyone to use. We look forward to building for you in 2021.
