Blockchain company OKX has launched a joint venture with New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange.
The collaboration, announced Monday (June 22) will operate as a U.S. regulated broker dealer and futures commissions merchant, allowing OKX’s American and overseas customers to access Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) futures and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tokenized equities markets.
The venture will also explore “adjacent opportunities for regulatory-compliant blockchain-enabled markets,” the companies said in a news release, and will be co-chaired by ICE and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“The next chapter of financial markets will be defined by how well innovation and government regulation can move forward together,” said Cuomo, who began working with OKX in 2023.
“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. 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.”
“The ICE-OKX joint venture is a step towards building the infrastructure that will define how global markets operate in the decades ahead,” said Trabue Bland, senior vice president, futures exchanges at ICE. “ICE’s global benchmarks and regulated market technology have earned the trust of institutions and traders everywhere and now, through our partnership with OKX, we are working towards extending that reach to OKX’s 120 million retail traders.”
The release notes that the joint venture comes on the heels of an investment by ICE in OKX, announced in March.
In related news PYMNTS wrote recently about tokenized deposits earlier this month following the announcement that major U.S. banks will launch a tokenized deposit network in 2027.
Rather than functioning as just another digital asset, tokenized deposits can help businesses “manage liquidity, automate cash movement and integrate payments into software-driven operations,” PYMNTS wrote, adding that this distinction could help determine when adoption occurs first.
“The number one [use case] that we hear is cross-border,” said Sal Karakaplan, chief strategy officer at The Clearing House.
He cited two continual client needs: traditional business-to-business payments and multinational corporations that do their banking with multiple institutions.
“The treasurer of that multinational corporation wants to move money in a seamless way,” he added.
