OKX Secures $25B Valuation with New Funding Round

The round drew a mix of banks, crypto firms and a trading house. Investors named so far:

• Standard Chartered Bank’s SC Ventures
• Circle
• Ripple
• London-based Qube Research & Technologies (QRT)

The raise continues a financing effort that began in March. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, previously put in about $200 million, and that earlier investment also valued OKX at $25 billion. OKX says the new money will go toward its long-term market infrastructure.

A Tokenized NYSE Stock Venture Waits on the SEC

OKX has also filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a tokenized stock trading platform. The vehicle is OKXICE LLC, a joint venture with ICE, and it plans to offer trading in 63 NYSE-listed public companies.

Issuers get a 30-day opt-out period before trading begins. The SEC recently opened the door to blockchain securities trading under a temporary exemption framework, and the tokenized assets must carry full shareholder rights.

The CFTC Puts Forward Its First Crypto Rules

On the same front, U.S. regulators are putting crypto regulation on paper. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has proposed its first set of rules, called Crypto Asset Transactions (CTX) and Crypto Asset Markets (CAM), which aim to create a federal framework for trading platforms.

CFTC Chair Michael S. Selig described the move as a shift away from “regulation by enforcement” toward clear guidelines. Under the proposal:

• Platforms would get a single federal registration pathway
• Qualified platforms could offer margined crypto trading to retail investors
• BTC, ETH, SOL, XLM, XTZ and XRP are identified by Selig as “digital commodities”

Stablecoin Cards Keep Scaling

Elsewhere, Stripe plans to take its stablecoin card project to more than 100 countries by late 2026. Spending on stablecoin cards reached $1.2 billion last month, a threefold increase year on year.

Hashlytics Take

The $25 billion figure deserves some caution. It is a reported valuation attached to a round whose size nobody has disclosed, and the earlier ICE investment carried the same number, so it is hard to say how much the price has actually moved. What does look real is the direction. OKX is tying itself to regulated rails, from an NYSE parent as partner to an SEC exemption and a CFTC rulebook still in proposal form. Tokenized trading for 63 companies, with issuers free to opt out, is a modest start, and the retail margin trading depends on rules that are not final yet.