The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange strategically invests in OKX: The intentions behind the $25 billion valuation

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

On the evening of March 5, OKX announced a strategic investment from the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, at a valuation of $25 billion, making OKX another cryptocurrency exchange endorsed by traditional financial giants.

In the previous year, similar cases emerged continuously: Binance received a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi's technology investment firm MGX, market maker Citadel Securities invested $200 million in Kraken, Japan's financial group SBI Holdings announced the acquisition of Singapore's cryptocurrency exchange Coinhako, and South Korea's largest portal operator Naver acquired the cryptocurrency exchange Upbit...

These continuous cases indicate that cryptocurrency exchanges are becoming a battleground for traditional finance and tech giants, as well as an important foothold in the strategic landscape of Web3. Cryptocurrency exchanges themselves are also increasingly aligning with traditional capital markets. Over the past year, Gemini, Hashkey Group, and Bullish have successively gone public on mainstream stock exchanges, and OKX has also been reported to be formulating an IPO strategy.

In this context, OKX accepting the olive branch extended by ICE seems quite natural.

According to reports, ICE's investment in OKX is valued at $25 billion, which is equivalent to half of Coinbase's current market value. After the news was released, the price of OKX's platform token OKB surged by as much as 59% to $124 in a short period, with a fully diluted market capitalization reaching $26 billion. However, it is important to note that ICE is investing in the equity of OKX's parent company, which is not directly related to OKB, and the price of OKB has since fallen back to around $98.

Although the specific amount of this investment has not been disclosed, the fact that ICE obtained a board seat indicates that this investment gives ICE at least a 5% stake in OKX, which means at least a $1.25 billion investment. For reference, in last year's investment in Polymarket, ICE invested $2 billion at a valuation of $9 billion, demonstrating the scale of their investment.

Currently, ICE's total market capitalization is $93 billion, with total revenue of $9.9 billion over 25 years and total profits of $3.3 billion. The significant investments in OKX and Polymarket are not small amounts for ICE, reflecting ICE's strong determination to advance its Web3 strategy.

From a strategic perspective, this investment is symbolically significant for both giants in different fields. According to the announcement, OKX will provide real-time price information for cryptocurrencies that can be traded on the ICE exchange, and there is potential for direct trading flow in the future, which will significantly benefit OKX in expanding its user base.

At the same time, OKX has long been mired in compliance dilemmas, with the label of a Chinese offshore exchange lingering. Although it has successively obtained licenses such as the EU MiCA crypto asset service license and the Singapore payment institution license, due to historical issues, OKX admitted in February 2025 that it had provided trading services in the U.S. without permission and was fined $504 million by U.S. regulators.

Because of this, OKX has been particularly cautious in its approach to compliance over the past few years. Taking the recent rise of tokenized stocks as an example, OKX's entry time into mainstream exchanges has been noticeably late, only announcing the launch of stock perpetual contract products in certain countries and regions in February of this year. In many markets where regulations are unclear, users still cannot find relevant stock derivatives on the OKX platform.

Through the investment cooperation with ICE, OKX will be able to significantly reshape its image in traditional financial markets and regulatory bodies, especially in the European and American markets. "For OKX, this cooperation marks a new chapter in our entry into the U.S. market," said OKX founder Xu Mingxing.

On another level of cooperation, OKX will allow users to trade tokenized stocks and derivatives listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with this feature expected to launch in the second half of 2026. This will enable NYSE products to be traded not only by U.S. investors but also directly by global investors through OKX.

"We believe that the field of tokenized securities and the digital representation of traditional assets holds enormous potential. In the future, issuers may be able to push securities directly to global investors through modern digital infrastructure while benefiting from the governance, market structure, and regulatory framework that traditional exchanges have relied on for a long time," Xu Mingxing stated. "Collaborating with the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and the broader New York Stock Exchange ecosystem provides us with a unique opportunity to explore how these models can evolve responsibly."

In fact, the wave of tokenized securities is rapidly sweeping across the financial market. From U.S. Treasury bonds to private equity, and from stocks to ETFs, an increasing number of traditional assets are being attempted for digital issuance and trading through blockchain technology.

For exchanges, this not only means new trading categories but may also reshape the liquidity structure of capital markets—asset issuance, clearing, and trading will no longer be limited to a specific country or trading period but will enter a new era of 24/7 global liquidity sharing.

In the past few years, the crypto industry has oscillated between "challenging traditional finance" and "being absorbed by traditional finance." From Coinbase's IPO to traditional market makers and exchange giants investing in crypto platforms, and now ICE's investment in OKX, more and more signs indicate that the relationship between the two is shifting from opposition to integration.

In this process, cryptocurrency exchanges are no longer just the center of speculative markets but are gradually becoming a new type of financial infrastructure connecting global capital and digital assets.