Why did ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, choose OKX to invest in crypto exchanges again after ten years?

Author: Nancy, PANews

Last night, OKX dropped a bombshell, securing an investment from ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, at a valuation of $25 billion. The significance of this deal goes beyond the valuation itself.

This is not a typical capital game dominated by VCs, but rather a game personally played by core players in traditional finance. Even more surprisingly, ICE, the century-old giant that heads the NYSE, did not choose its own homegrown partners, but instead extended an olive branch to an exchange founded by Chinese people with deep crypto roots.

It's worth noting that ICE founder Jeffrey Sprecher is a key supporter of US President Trump. During Trump's campaign, he donated millions of dollars to multiple political action committees (PACs). His wife, former Senator Kelly Loeffler, currently serves as the head of the US Small Business Administration (SBA) and is also considered a key member of the Trump campaign. In the highly intertwined regulatory and political environment of the US crypto industry, such connections are often seen as carrying additional symbolic significance.

With 120 million users and ten years of experience, ICE aims to break through in the RWA battle.

In the crypto space, ICE was one of the first traditional financial giants to take action, but it did not yield the expected results.

In 2018, as the crypto market began to gain mainstream attention, ICE attempted to enter the fray directly, launching the crypto derivatives platform Bakkt with great fanfare. The project was personally overseen by Kelly Loeffler, wife of ICE founder Jeffrey Sprecher and then CEO. At the time, ICE aimed to provide institutional investors with a compliant and secure crypto trading channel, but ultimately this move fell short of expectations.

The turning point came after 2025. As institutional funds gradually flowed into the crypto market and the regulatory environment became clearer, ICE began to take strategic steps back into the crypto world. But this time, ICE changed its approach, no longer trying to build from scratch, but instead rapidly entering key areas through partnerships or investments.

For example, ICE quickly entered the on-chain prediction market by investing in Polymarket, and joined forces with Circle and Chainlink to advance the underlying construction of RWA.

RWA, in particular, is seen by ICE as a key direction for the next generation of capital markets. ICE, one of the world's largest exchange groups, operates the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). However, this exchange, with over two centuries of history, has faced new competitive pressures in recent years. Nasdaq has gradually gained an advantage in both trading volume and attracting technology companies to list.

More importantly, in September of last year, Nasdaq submitted a proposal to the SEC seeking approval for trading and settling tokenized versions of Nasdaq-listed stocks and ETPs, which was seen as a major transformation of its business.

In response to this trend, ICE has also begun to accelerate its actions.

In January of this year, the NYSE announced the development of a blockchain-based tokenized securities platform. According to the plan, the platform will support 24/7 trading of US stocks and achieve T+0 instant settlement. In its design, tokenized stocks will have the same dividend and governance rights as traditional securities. To ensure 24/7 fund flows, the NYSE has not opted for a stablecoin solution, but instead plans to partner with banks such as BNY Mellon and Citibank to introduce tokenized deposits.

In order to accelerate the development of RWA business, ICE has set its sights on OKX, which has 120 million active users and has been deeply involved in the crypto field for ten years.

In the US domestic market, exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken have a compliance advantage, but OKX is more advanced in terms of the activity and scale of global retail users. At the same time, compared with financial service platforms such as Robinhood, OKX's crypto business has a wider coverage, and its data performance in spot trading, derivatives and on-chain products is also more impressive, and it has ten years of product experience.

According to Forbes, Haider Rafique, Global Managing Partner of OKX, flew to Atlanta last summer for a four-hour conversation with ICE founder Jeffrey Sprecher. “We had a great chemistry on how we look at the world, the future of tokenized securities, how derivatives are going global, and how traditional finance and digital assets can merge.”

Jeffrey Sprecher also publicly pointed out that OKX possesses enormous distribution capabilities, and ICE will leverage this relationship to expand its global retail user base and accelerate its plans to provide on-chain infrastructure and tokenized assets to US investors. Furthermore, Star has experience in building successful companies.

Under the cooperation agreement, OKX will authorize ICE to provide real-time cryptocurrency price data, upon which ICE plans to launch cryptocurrency futures products. Simultaneously, ICE will also open up tokenization channels for NYSE-listed assets to OKX, allowing OKX users to directly trade NYSE-to-tokenized stocks and related derivatives on the platform. This feature is expected to launch in the second half of 2026. Furthermore, the two parties will also advance clearing and risk management solutions, multi-chain custody and wallet architecture, and structured connections required for institutions to confidently participate in the digital asset market.

To support this strategy, OKX also plans to strengthen its presence in the United States. According to Rafique, OKX is considering relocating up to 2,000 employees to the United States, but did not disclose a specific timeline.

Why is ICE investing in exchanges again now, ten years after investing in Coinbase?

Publicly available information shows that OKX has completed four rounds of financing to date. The three rounds of financing prior to 2017 ranged from several million to tens of millions of US dollars, but specific valuations were not disclosed at the time. However, PANews previously reported that when OKC Holdings Corporation, the parent company of OKX's predecessor OKCoin, went public on the Hong Kong stock market in 2019 through a reverse merger, the valuation corresponding to the exit of some investors was approximately US$200 million.

Several years later, OKX's valuation has risen significantly to $25 billion, which is due to both the expansion of its own business and the era of crypto assets becoming mainstream.

In this round of financing, neither OKX nor ICE officially disclosed the specific amount raised. However, according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter, ICE invested approximately $200 million in OKX. In terms of the scale of the investment, this substantial amount represents the institutional business's determination to transform and reflects the industry's maturing trend.

In fact, this is not ICE's first investment in a crypto exchange. Back in 2015, ICE made a forward-looking investment in Coinbase, acquiring a 1.4% stake. After Coinbase went public in 2021, ICE chose to cash out and exit, which can be considered a successful crypto investment case.

Ten years later, ICE chose to invest in OKX Investment. In addition to aligning with its own layout in the crypto business, the market generally believes that ICE also saw the potential returns in it.

Among cryptocurrency exchanges already listed in the US, Coinbase is already publicly traded and currently has a market capitalization of approximately $54 billion. While OKX is similar to Coinbase in terms of global trading volume and user base, its market valuation is significantly lower. If OKX successfully enters the US capital market in the future, its valuation could potentially increase further. Meanwhile, among cryptocurrency institutions planning US IPOs, such as Kraken, Upbit, and Gmini, there may be differences between them and ICE in terms of business fit, distribution capabilities, and strategic positioning.

OKX has signaled its intention to IPO in the US, and with the capital market's increasing focus on the RWA narrative, if OKX can become a significant distribution channel for tokenized assets on the NYSE, its valuation logic may be re-evaluated. In other words, if OKX goes public or its valuation increases in the future, ICE could not only gain business synergies but also potentially obtain substantial investment returns.

For OKX, the introduction of ICE has a more practical significance. OKX is attempting to re-enter the US market, and last year it agreed to pay nearly $500 million to settle lawsuits. This move is seen as an important step in OKX's restructuring of its US strategy.

Against this backdrop, the investment from traditional financial institutions like ICE carries greater credibility. As the parent company of the NYSE, ICE not only wields significant influence within the US financial system and possesses a mature compliance framework, but its investment in OKX and acquisition of a board seat will help mitigate regulatory uncertainties OKX will face in its future development in the United States.

OKX CEO Star also acknowledged that this partnership marks a new chapter for OKX's expansion into the US market. In many ways, OKX views its US operations as a blank slate, an opportunity to thoughtfully build, constructively engage with regulators and related institutions, and contribute to building market infrastructure that meets the standards of the world's most mature capital markets.

For ICE and OKX, this collaboration could be a crucial move in the next round of competition in the new financial landscape.