Dec. 4 (NBD) -- Cryptocurrency investors feel chillier than ever this winter. 

Data from Feixiaohao, a leading Asian cryptocurrency analysis website, shows the value of the entire cryptocurrency market slipped 83 percent to 135 billion U.S. dollars on Monday from its peak of 813.9 billion U.S. dollars on January 8 of this year. 

According to incomplete statistics, OKEx, the world's second largest digital asset exchange by trading volume, has hidden and delisted one quarter of tokens from its platform.

Last Tuesday, OKEx announced its plan to delist or hide 38 tokens with weak liquidity and small trading volume across 49 trading pairs from its trading list by the end of November in order to maintain a healthy trading environment and provide pleasant trading experience on the platform. Tokens removed include ATL, CIT, DENT, KEY, and MTL.

Photo/VCG

NBD noticed this is the digital asset exchange's third delisting and hiding lot in four months. 

As early as August this year, OKEx hid 46 and wiped 29 tokens from its listings. Two months later, another 42 tokens across 58 trading pairs were removed from the platform. 

The new round of delisting process pushed the total number of affected tokens on OKEx in the past four months to 155, around one fourth of the exchange's total. According to data from cryptocurrency data aggregation website CoinMarketCap, 459 tokens are left on OKEx at present. 

Out of the 38 newly removed tokens, some once delivered a remarkable performance. For example, MTL hit up to 98.04 yuan (14.2 U.S. dollars) on September 8 of last year, and DENT saw a 169-fold increase in price during the period from August 13, 2017 to January 10, 2018, according to data from Feixiaohao. 

OKEx is not the only exchange that hid and delisted inactive tokens. 

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance delisted four digital currencies from its listing in October. And some relatively small exchanges are wiping inactive trading pairs as well. Singapore-based DragonEX has eliminated eight tokens from its platform, and MXC Exchange has delisted 29 currencies. 

Amid the downward trend, the 24-hour transaction volume of the whole cryptocurrency market was logged at 13.8 billion U.S. dollars on Monday, down 80 percent from the highest level of 70 billion U.S. dollars registered on January 5, 2018. 

Trading volume is the ultimate reflection of the final exchange value. A token without trading volume is of no value at all. 

According to CoinMarketCap's data updated on 7:29 of Tuesday (UTC), of the 2,064 digital currencies collected, 738, around 36 percent of the total, generated 24-hour trading volume of more than 200,000 yuan (29,011.2 U.S. dollars). This indicates more than 60 percent of cryptocurrencies are facing a problem of low tradability and illiquidity. 

And up to 815 tokens, 39 percent of the total, produced 24-hour transaction volume of less than 10,000 yuan (1,450.6 U.S. dollars). 

Japan, one of the countries that hold a friendly attitude towards cryptocurrencies and ICOs (initial coin offerings), is seemed to change its stance. 

The country's Financial Services Agency held a symposium recently, with the topic focusing on whether it is appropriate to develop ICOs and in what way ICOs could be developed.

It was learned from the symposium that a study released by New York-based ICO advisory firm Satis Group found approximately 78 percent of ICOs were Identified Scams. Meanwhile, a report released by London-based multinational professional services firm Ernst & Young in October this year reveals that 71 percent of ICOs have no offering in the market at all. 

This is absolutely a heavy blow to the cryptocurrency industry. 

An industry insider also told NBD that in fact, more than 90 percent of digital currencies on the market have no main chain or application scenarios or open-source codes.  

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn