THE GIST

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The NYSE’s parent company announced a joint venture with a global crypto exchange on Monday. The venture, a partnership between Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and OKX will be called OKXICE. If approved, this would mark a major turnaround for OKX, which was recently fined over $500 million for anti-money-laundering and KYC (know-your-customer) failures—and could be an even bigger blow to the market share of platforms like Coinbase.

WHAT HAPPENED

The news of the venture follows ICE’s announcement of a “strategic partnership,” and investment in OKX in March. While financial terms weren’t disclosed, ICE said that OKX’s valuation was about $25 billion.

The 50-50 venture will give OKX’s 120 million customers access to ICE futures and NYSE tokenized-equities markets. It’s unclear whether this will happen via a new app or through OKX’s existing platform. The joint venture may soon operate as a U.S. registered broker-dealer and a futures commission merchant (FCM), entities that facilitate options and futures trading by accepting orders and handling margin requirements.

The joint venture will be co-chaired by former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been involved with OKX since 2022 as a paid policy advisor, alongside Trabue Bland, ICE’s Senior Vice President of Futures Exchanges. Cuomo, who is still a licensed attorney, advised OKX on its most recent legal issues, Bloomberg reports. Given how that turned out for OKX — a $504 million DOJ settlement and a guilty plea in February 2025 — you might think any confidence in Cuomo would be gone. Apparently not.

“This partnership brings together OKX’s world-class blockchain technology and ICE’s trusted market infrastructure to help build a more modern, transparent, and resilient financial system for the future,” Cuomo said. “I am personally excited by the prospect of the societal impact that blockchain technology can lead to: the democratization of finance, bringing basic financial services to underserved populations.”

WHY IT MATTERS

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This joint venture is the next step for ICE as it builds out regulatory-compliant, blockchain-enabled markets and tokenized equities. OKX’s 120 million customers are the trade-off. ICE gets the traders. ICE said in January it would build its own platform. Now, after backing Coinbase, Bakkt (the SaaS and API platform), Polymarket, and finally OKX, it’s positioned itself as the metaphorical crypto rails and tollbooths for it all. Longer term, once it gets through U.S. regulatory hurdles, trading volume could surge with practically zero incremental operational costs, given the low-cost nature of the blockchain infrastructure it’s spent years building.

And we don’t imagine SEC Chair Paul Atkins will give too much trouble, either.

OKX wins threefold: It provides ICE with new retail accounts, expands its product catalog beyond crypto into futures and tokenized equities, and rebrands itself as a “safe,” NYSE-backed exchange. Those are big accomplishments given its position a year ago, with rumors now pointing toward an eventual IPO. The market saw a wave of them in recent months: Bullish (BLSH), the Peter Thiel-backed exchange; Circle (CRCL), the stablecoin issuer; and eToro (ETOR). Plenty are on the back burner waiting for their turn, including Kraken and the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini, with OKX possibly next.

WHAT’S NEXT

The enthusiasm behind this ongoing build-out, given the current malaise in the Bitcoin and crypto market, is exciting. It’s contradictory, but that’s how these sectors are: When everyone is talking about them, it’s usually time to exit. When they’re not, it’s usually a good time to look at what the big players are gearing up for.

For Coinbase, the rising tide of competition and market saturation isn’t great. Coinbase used to be one of the only places someone could buy crypto. Those days are long gone. Robinhood and many others took a bite of its share. Coinbase smartly pivoted to traditional equities, tokenized digital equities, and standard futures/perpetual derivatives while staying true to its crypto roots.

If OKXICE receives regulatory clearance, it will be able to offer the same with official integration with NYSE infrastructure, which Coinbase doesn’t have.