OKX Unified Account: The Third Generation Trading System Leading for Three Years
Taking the combined margin full position model as an example, it mainly has three core functions: profit and loss hedging, risk hedging, and trading type hedging.On December 23, 2020, OKX announced the launch of the Unified Account system and began global public testing, which has subtly changed users' habits.
Three years later, the Unified Account pioneered by the established cryptocurrency exchange OKX still maintains industry leadership. The main reasons behind this are three core principles: OKX insists on simplifying product operation experience, starting from user needs in product functionality, and most importantly, OKX continues to innovate in product iteration.
The first-generation cryptocurrency exchange accounts only had simple fiat accounts and cryptocurrency accounts, which could only meet users' basic needs for deposits, withdrawals, and spot trading, with limited functionality. The second-generation cryptocurrency exchange accounts leaned more towards richness and functionality, allowing users to have at least multiple independent accounts such as fiat accounts, cryptocurrency accounts, margin accounts, perpetual accounts, delivery accounts, and options accounts, greatly increasing playability. However, since these accounts do not interconnect, users need to transfer funds back and forth to the corresponding accounts when conducting different types of trades, which is not only inefficient and cumbersome but also creates financial barriers and is detrimental to increasing margin thickness in extreme market conditions, resulting in relatively low capital utilization.
To further enhance the user trading experience, OKX, leveraging its deep technical accumulation, began to promote the arrival of the third-generation cryptocurrency exchange accounts, which has epoch-making and industry-inspiring significance.
Account Framework and Applicable Users
The OKX Unified Account is a trading system that allows buying and selling various cryptocurrency derivatives settled in different currencies through a single trading account, divided into three types: fund accounts, trading accounts, and financial accounts. The fund and financial accounts are mainly used for savings and wealth management, while the trading account is the focus of today's discussion, the Unified Account system. Under this account, users can conduct five major trading types—spot trading, margin trading, delivery contracts, perpetual contracts, and options contracts—along with up to 14 trading strategies and spot contract copy trading, without needing to transfer funds back and forth, significantly enhancing trading convenience at the operational level.
For different types of users, the OKX Unified Account offers four account modes, including simple trading mode, single currency margin mode, cross-currency margin mode, and combination margin mode, from simple to advanced modes, to precisely match users' trading needs.
Account Advantages and Use Cases
In non-margin mode, users can simultaneously conduct spot and options trading within the same account, but it does not provide margin, delivery contracts, or perpetual contracts. The OKX non-margin mode is designed from the perspective of protecting novice users, avoiding their direct participation in complex derivative trading with high leverage by simplifying the process, thus establishing a relatively safe and risk-controlled trading environment for novice users.
The single currency full margin mode is the most used mode by users, allowing them to conduct cryptocurrency, margin, options, perpetual contracts, and delivery contracts in the same account, as well as hedging and arbitrage of derivatives with the same settlement currency. All trading varieties with the same settlement currency will share margin, and trading profits and losses can offset each other. For example, two contracts both based on BTC will share margin. However, positions and margins are independent between trading varieties with different settlement currencies, and trading profits and losses cannot be shared. Compared to the second-generation independent account model, the single currency margin mode greatly simplifies trading steps, making it very smooth, while isolating risks between different currencies and improving the efficiency of account funds.
The cross-currency full margin mode is the most representative mode in the OKX Unified Account, allowing the same trading types as the single currency margin mode, hedging and arbitraging derivatives with the same or different settlement currencies, and even trading derivatives of a currency without holding that asset. The difference is that all trading varieties will share margin, and trading profits and losses can offset each other, thus supporting cross-currency full margin mode. For example, multiple transactions such as BTC contracts and ETH contracts can share one margin, increasing the margin thickness. Compared to the single currency margin mechanism, this mode converts all cryptocurrency assets into U-based margin according to the conversion rate for all positions, breaking the account restrictions between different currencies, reducing the risk of liquidation, and further improving capital utilization. For instance, under the previous independent model, the liquidation risk for BTC contracts and ETH contracts during a downturn was 20,000 U and 2,000 U respectively, but in the cross-currency full margin mode, the liquidation points may be reduced to 1,000 U and 1,000 U, lowering the risk of liquidation.
In the combination margin full mode, complex hedging combinations and options combinations can be conducted, as well as hedging and arbitraging between the same underlying derivatives and spot trading, and trading derivatives of a currency without holding that asset. For example, a user can hold only BTC but trade ETHUSDT perpetual contracts. All trading varieties share margin, and the margin for derivatives under the same index can offset each other, allowing trading profits and losses to offset each other, but it does not support risk hedging. By constructing a certain scale of hedging combinations, risk exposure can be reduced, effectively lowering the maintenance margin requirement and further improving capital utilization. For instance, when a user has a large position size, a good hedging structure, and has options hedging/spot hedging strategies, the margin requirement is lower.
Users can flexibly choose from the four account modes of the OKX Unified Account based on their needs, reducing the probability of liquidation in extreme market conditions and improving capital utilization.
Product Highlights and Technological Innovations
As the most comprehensive and advanced account system in the industry, the OKX Unified Account has many highlight features worth exploring.
Taking the combination margin full mode as an example, it has three core functions: profit and loss hedging, risk hedging, and trading type hedging. Especially when users conduct trading type hedging, this mode not only supports hedging between derivatives but also uniquely supports hedging between spot and derivatives. Additionally, when users hedge between spot and derivatives, it does not lock the user's spot assets, allowing for flexible use.
The single currency margin mode has set up two layers of risk checks: the first layer is called risk control order cancellation check, and the second layer is called pre-reduction position check. This ensures that users can trade normally, avoiding the complete cancellation of orders or partial or total liquidation due to insufficient margin.
Currently, many exchanges still cannot implement the cross-currency full margin mode. This mode not only supports users to conduct cryptocurrency, margin, options, perpetual contracts, and delivery contracts simultaneously within the same account, as well as hedging and arbitraging derivatives with the same or different settlement currencies, but also features very fast margin calculation and settlement speed. This is because OKX utilizes exclusive backend verification and calculation rules to achieve converting all cryptocurrency assets into U-based margin for all positions according to the conversion rate.
Moreover, in the cross-currency full margin mode, an automatic borrowing function is also supported. Users can choose to "enable borrowing" or "disable borrowing" in the settings based on their needs. When the borrowing mode is enabled, if the effective margin in the account's dollar value is sufficient, users can still conduct "no-coin trading" even when the balance of a certain currency is insufficient, greatly enhancing trading convenience.
For example, if a user only has SOL but wants to buy ORDI, and since the exchange does not have an SOL/ORDI trading pair, only SOL/USDT and ORDI/USDT trading pairs are available, the user would need to convert SOL to USDT and then buy ORDI. However, with the borrowing function enabled, the user can directly use SOL to purchase ORDI. This is because the system will lend USDT to the user interest-free for purchasing ORDI, improving the user's trading convenience and reducing transaction fees.
Third-Generation Cryptocurrency Exchange Accounts
With the continuous development of the cryptocurrency market, the derivatives market in the cryptocurrency industry is also showing strong growth momentum, attracting more and more investors and institutions to participate. Especially under the backdrop of a gradually clearer regulatory environment and further market maturity, it is expected to continue to grow. However, the shortcomings of the second-generation cryptocurrency accounts are becoming more pronounced, and users' demand for efficient and simple trading methods and experiences is more urgent.
As the most important scenario for the circulation of cryptocurrency assets, the OKX Unified Account has overcome the challenge of calculating different businesses such as cryptocurrency, margin, options, perpetual contracts, and delivery contracts within a unified trading account. By setting up four account modes—simple trading mode, single currency margin mode, cross-currency margin mode, and combination margin mode—it can precisely adapt to different user trading needs, solving the redundancy and complexity issues of the second-generation accounts, and greatly enhancing the smoothness and convenience of trading. By sharing margin, it reduces the risk of liquidation and improves capital utilization, achieving the integration of the internal financial ecosystem and efficient and convenient trading of user assets, redefining the third-generation trading account system.
As a global leader in cryptocurrency and Web3 technology, in recent years, OKX has not only provided high liquidity trading globally but also committed to promoting the development of financial tools, offering users more trading and investment options. By continuously leading financial technology solutions to drive higher-level products, it provides investors with more innovative financial tools, including Web3 wallets, CeFi structured products, etc., thereby promoting large-scale adoption in the cryptocurrency industry and serving as a demonstration for the industry, which will continue to welcome more exciting innovations.
It can be imagined that in the future, with the emergence of various new financial tools in the cryptocurrency industry, users will be provided with broader and more convenient services, significantly lowering their participation thresholds, potentially becoming a "new growth engine" to support the next peak of the cryptocurrency industry.
