Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Circle, Ripple, Qube Research & Technologies, and Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures have invested in OKX.
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The undisclosed financing extends ICE’s March investment and maintains a $25 billion pre-money valuation.
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OKX aims to expand beyond crypto trading into payments, investing, and tokenized traditional assets.
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Its ICE joint venture has filed to offer round-the-clock trading in tokenized shares of 63 U.S. companies.
OKX has secured investment from Circle, Ripple, Qube Research & Technologies (QRT), and SC Ventures as it broadens its ambitions beyond cryptocurrency trading.
The exchange did not disclose the amount raised. The financing extends a March investment by Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, and values OKX at $25 billion on a pre-money basis.
Founder and CEO Star Xu said the company is evolving into a global financial technology platform, with the goal of allowing customers to hold, spend, invest, and grow their money through a single service.
New Investors Connect OKX With Payments and Institutional Finance
The investor lineup reflects the areas OKX is targeting as it expands. Circle issues the USDC stablecoin, while Ripple provides payments infrastructure and issues RLUSD. SC Ventures is the venture arm of Standard Chartered, and QRT is a quantitative investment manager.
The companies also have connections to the financial infrastructure surrounding OKX. Standard Chartered serves as custodian for BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund under a collateral arrangement involving OKX and BlackRock.
QRT is an institutional counterparty to the exchange, providing liquidity and trading capacity.
The financing comes as crypto exchanges increasingly seek to combine trading with payments, stablecoins, derivatives, stocks, and tokenized real-world assets.
OKX’s partnership with ICE is central to its move into traditional markets. Their joint venture, OKXICE, filed this week to introduce tokenized stock trading under a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission framework.
The proposed venue would offer 24/7 trading in tokenized shares of 63 U.S. companies using OKX’s X Layer blockchain. Supported settlement assets would include USDC, USDT, and USDG.
The shares would retain dividend and voting rights, connecting the blockchain-based trading model with ownership rights associated with conventional equities.
The proposal represents an early test of the SEC’s new five-year tokenization framework. The filing does not, by itself, establish that trading has begun.
Analysts Question Institutional Demand and Liquidity
Whether OKXICE can attract substantial institutional participation remains uncertain. In a Tuesday report, Macquarie said adoption would depend on attracting enough companies, investors, and liquidity providers to support reliable pricing around the clock.
The temporary nature of the SEC exemption presents another challenge. Institutions may hesitate to spend money integrating their systems before they know whether the regulatory arrangements will continue beyond the exemption period.
TD Securities raised similar concerns in a Monday note.
Macquarie expects initial adoption to lean toward retail investors. Institutions already have efficient access to U.S.-listed equities and face additional regulatory and technology hurdles when connecting to a new venue.
Despite those questions, OKXICE could provide a further test of stablecoins as settlement tools in regulated securities markets.
That would extend their role beyond crypto trading and connect OKX’s exchange infrastructure more closely with payments and traditional assets.
The new investment supports the company’s broader direction, while its tokenized stock venture will test whether round-the-clock access and blockchain settlement can attract sustained demand.
