Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On March 5, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced a strategic investment in OKX, which is valued at $25 billion. ICE will gain a seat on the OKX board, and both parties disclosed a series of joint product plans. Following the announcement, the OKX platform token OKB briefly surpassed 120 USDT, skyrocketing over 50% on that day.
This marks the first time that the world's most important traditional financial exchange infrastructure operator has established a formal strategic relationship with a leading cryptocurrency exchange through direct equity investment.
According to the announcements from both parties, the cooperation covers both investment and product levels. In terms of investment, ICE acquired a minority stake in OKX and entered the board, although the specific amount has not been disclosed. According to Bloomberg citing insiders, ICE has invested approximately $200 million in OKX.
On the product front, both parties agreed to open their core assets to each other. OKX authorized ICE to access real-time cryptocurrency price data, which ICE will use as the basis to launch cryptocurrency asset futures products; in return, ICE will open tokenization channels for NYSE listed assets to OKX, allowing OKX users to trade tokenized stocks and related derivatives from the NYSE directly on the platform, with this function expected to launch in the second half of 2026.
Meanwhile, OKX announced plans to relocate up to 2,000 employees (approximately 40% of its total workforce) to the United States to support the localization of its U.S. operations. The origin of this collaboration, as revealed by Haider Rafique, Global Head of Corporate Affairs at OKX, stems from in-depth discussions with NYSE Chairman Jeffrey Sprecher last summer. "Both parties share a high degree of alignment regarding the future development vision for tokenized securities and derivatives," which was the core consensus driving this deal.
ICE's Cryptocurrency Strategy
The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is one of the world's core financial market infrastructure operators, with assets including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), global derivatives exchanges, and clearing platforms. In 2025, ICE's total revenue reached $9.9 billion, a 7% year-on-year increase, with total derivatives trading volume exceeding 2.4 billion contracts, setting a record, and its current market capitalization is approximately $86.5 billion.
This is not ICE's first attempt to enter the cryptocurrency market, nor is it the second.
In 2018, Jeffrey Sprecher led ICE to incubate Bakkt, a compliant Bitcoin futures platform designed for institutional investors, featuring physical delivery. Theoretically flawless, ICE's regulatory endorsement, physical settlement, and institutional-level custody were what the cryptocurrency market lacked at the time.
However, reality was quite stark. On its launch day, Bakkt's Bitcoin futures traded only 71 contracts, worth about $700,000. In the following months, trading volume remained depressed, forcing ICE to pay market makers incentive fees to maintain basic liquidity. Bakkt later de-listed, and its stock price continued to decline, leading ICE to essentially exit the market. The core issue was that ICE attempted to construct cryptocurrency infrastructure using traditional financial methods, which cryptocurrency users did not require.
After Bakkt's failure, ICE's strategy underwent a fundamental shift, abandoning self-building in favor of direct investment in established crypto-native platforms.
In October 2025, ICE invested $2 billion in the prediction market platform Polymarket, which was valued at approximately $9 billion; ICE also became the global distributor of Polymarket event data and agreed to future collaborations around tokenized assets. Five months later, ICE made another move, this time targeting OKX, the second-ranked cryptocurrency exchange by global trading volume.
Putting these three steps together reveals a clear outline of ICE's cryptocurrency landscape. Bakkt was a failed attempt to educate the market using traditional frameworks; Polymarket covered the prediction and event data layer; OKX secured the execution layer for spot and derivatives. From self-building to investment, from single points to multilayered strategies, this is a conscious infrastructure puzzle.
Competing Head-on with Nasdaq, and Why Now
To understand the timing of this transaction, one must first grasp what has happened in the U.S. regulatory environment over the past year.
After 2025, the policy tone of major financial regulatory agencies in the U.S. towards the cryptocurrency industry experienced the most significant shift in nearly a decade. In April 2025, pro-crypto Paul Atkins became the President of the SEC and immediately announced the advancement of "Project Crypto," aimed at establishing a clear classification framework for digital assets. In January 2026, the SEC officially released classification guidelines for tokenized securities, clarifying that tokenized stocks fall within the current securities law framework.
Recently, the SEC announced it has submitted a committee-level guidance document to the White House, concerning the applicability of the Federal Securities Law to certain types of cryptocurrency assets and related transactions. This may clarify which cryptocurrency assets fall under securities regulation and which are regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Meanwhile, the CFTC has also submitted proposals to the White House regarding regulatory measures for prediction markets, planning to study new industry rules through advanced notice of proposed rulemaking.
In this window, Nasdaq and the NYSE began to simultaneously ramp up efforts in the tokenized securities space, albeit with distinctly different approaches.
Nasdaq is pursuing a rules application route. In September 2025, it submitted a rule amendment application to the SEC, proposing to allow members to settle tokenized forms of securities within the exchange; in January 2026, it submitted a revised version, introducing the U.S. Securities Depository Clearing Corporation as a supporting infrastructure for settlement, aiming for the first batch of tokenized securities to achieve on-chain settlement by the third quarter of 2026.
ICE's approach is entirely different and more comprehensive.
The NYSE announced at the beginning of the year that it is independently developing a platform for trading tokenized securities and on-chain settlement, seeking independent regulatory approval. This platform aims to support 24/7 trading of U.S. stocks and ETFs, fractional trading, stablecoin-based fund settlement, and instant delivery (T+0), with tokenized stocks having equivalent dividend and governance rights as traditional securities. This is a self-building action by ICE on the supply side, directly targeting Nasdaq's rules application approach.
Apart from the issuance end, ICE is also simultaneously positioning itself on the settlement and distribution ends. At the settlement level, ICE is collaborating with banks such as BNY Mellon and Citigroup to explore tokenized deposit and settlement infrastructures, aiming to support cross-time-zone, round-the-clock fund and margin management, addressing the fundamental contradictions in the traditional T+1 settlement system under a 24/7 trading model. At the distribution level, OKX's 120 million users provide the answer.
Without deep retail reach, both issuance platforms and settlement infrastructures are merely half-baked.
Aligning these three layers, the NYSE builds the issuance and matching platform, BNY Mellon and Citigroup cover clearing and settlement, and OKX handles global retail distribution. What ICE is constructing in the tokenized securities arena is a complete infrastructure stack from issuance to settlement to reach. Currently, Nasdaq has only the first layer.
Prerequisites for Implementation
The collaboration framework is clear, but there are still variables that may affect its timely realization.
On the regulatory front, it remains to be further confirmed whether OKX, as a non-U.S. registered exchange, can directly offer tokenized NYSE stocks to U.S. users. Just a year ago in February 2025, OKX reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), acknowledging historical compliance deficiencies that led to unlicensed operation of fund transmission services in the U.S., agreeing to pay a fine of $84 million, and forfeiting approximately $421 million in income received from U.S. customers during that period.
OKX's plan to relocate 2,000 employees to the U.S. to establish a localized operational system is, to some extent, an extension of compliance oversight requirements and a necessary cost for rebuilding regulatory trust.
OKX's founder and CEO Star stated that they see their U.S. operations as "a blank slate," committing to "thoughtfully building and engaging in constructive interaction with regulators and relevant entities." In the context of marking one year since the DOJ settlement, this statement carries much more weight than typical public relations remarks.
The term "blank slate" indicates a fresh start in rebuilding relationships with regulators. Employee relocation to the U.S., ICE's board endorsement, and deep binding with the NYSE system are specific chips OKX is employing to support this "blank slate."
In comparison to ICE's last attempt to forcefully promote a regulatory framework through Bakkt, the strategies of both institutions this time are more pragmatic. Waiting for regulation instead of educating regulators is the approach taken. Bakkt's failure stemmed from attempting to persuade users to change their habits through compliance; this time, ICE chose to leverage the existing user habits to push the regulatory framework forward.
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