Intercontinental Exchange, the powerhouse parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has announced a strategic minority investment in OKX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume.
The deal, aimed at building a regulated bridge between traditional and decentralized financial markets, now values OKX at a staggering $25 billion – well above recent market entrants Bullish and Gemini. It also underscores how major Wall Street firms are racing to develop digital asset infrastructure as crypto evolves into a key cog of mainstream finance.
Intercontinental Exchange Buys Minority Stake in OKX, Valuing Exchange at $25B
As part of the agreement, ICE, which was also an early investor in Coinbase, will secure a seat on OKX’s Board of Directors, allowing the global financial services giant to influence the governance of a digital assets trading venue currently serving over 120 million users worldwide, and is licensed to operate in the United States, Europe, the UAE, Singapore, and Australia.
The collaboration centers around two primary pillars: the creation of regulated U.S. crypto futures and the global distribution of tokenized NYSE-listed stocks.
ICE plans to license OKX’s spot crypto prices to develop and launch regulated crypto futures contracts. This will bring an institutional-grade trust factor that major banks and hedge funds have long been demanding to enter the digital assets market by advancing clearing and risk management solutions, multi-chain custody, and wallet architecture.
Simultaneously, OKX will become the distributor of ICE’s U.S. futures and tokenized equities markets, allowing its massive retail base to trade fractionalized versions of the world’s most iconic stocks 24/7, subject to regulatory approvals.
“Our strategic relationship with OKX will expand global retail access to ICE’s pre-eminent regulated markets and accelerate our plans to offer on-chain infrastructure and tokenized assets to U.S. investors,” said Jeffrey C. Sprecher, ICE Chair & Chief Executive Officer. “Star has created a highly successful company, with enormous distribution, which will now connect NYSE and ICE markets to OKX’s customer base, bringing an exciting new stage for both vectors of finance.”
Star Xu, founder and CEO of OKX, echoed this sentiment, noting that the partnership combines the company’s high-performance blockchain execution stack with ICE’s world-class clearing and risk management frameworks to “help build a more reliable market structure” that bridges digital assets and equities.
This investment follows a pattern of aggressive expansion by ICE into DeFi. Late last year, the company announced a $2 billion stake in Polymarket – the world’s largest prediction market, valuing it at $9 billion. By bringing OKX into the mix, ICE is effectively assembling a comprehensive “information finance” (InfoFi) ecosystem where event-driven contracts from Polymarket can sit alongside tokenized stocks and legacy cryptocurrencies.
The market’s response to the ICE-OKX deal was immediate, with OKB, the native token of the OKX ecosystem, surging more than 20% within hours hit its highest price point since the late-2024 bull cycle.
Crypto Market Could Turn Bullish as Donald Trump Backs CLARITY Act
The timing of the deal coincides with a pivotal moment in Washington, where industry observers are closely watching the progress of the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, which is currently in the Senate. The bill aims to provide a definitive legal framework for digital commodities and stablecoins, potentially ending years of disputes between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over market oversight.
While the CLARITY Act missed its drafting deadline on March 1, analysts suggest that the crypto industry may reached an inflection point that could mark the end of the bear market after U.S. President Donald Trump signaled support for the sweeping market structure legislation on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, OKX’s rival Kraken became the first U.S. crypto firm to gain access to the Federal Reserve’s payments system through a limited-purpose master account. Kraken Financial, the crypto exchange’s banking arm, secured approval from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to settle USD transactions directly through Fedwire, instead of relying on an intermediary bank. This marks a major victory for an industry that has for years sought access to the central bank’s payment rails.
At the time of writing, OKB is trading at $97.97 – up 26.25% in 24 hours.
