TEN YEARS LATER, ICE, THE NEW HAVEN PARENT, CHOSE OKX

By Nancy, PANews

LAST NIGHT, OKX UNMISTAKABLY RELEASED A POUND OF INFORMATION TO OBTAIN AN INVESTMENT IN THE NEW HAVEN PARENT ICE WITH AN ESTIMATE OF $25 BILLION. THIS TRANSACTION IS MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN THE VALUATION ITSELF。

THIS IS NOT A TYPICAL VC-LED CAPITAL GAME, BUT RATHER A PERSONAL OUTCOME FOR THE CORE PLAYERS IN TRADITIONAL FINANCE. WHAT IS EVEN MORE SURPRISING IS THAT THE 100-YEAR-OLD HEAD OF ICE, INSTEAD OF CHOOSING THE NATIVE SYSTEM IN HIS OWN BACKYARD, THREW THE OLIVE BRANCH AT AN EXCHANGE FOUNDED BY THE CHINESE AND EQUIPPED WITH DEEP ENCRYPTED RAW GENES。

It is worth mentioning that ICE founder Jeffrey Sprecher is one of the important supporters of United States President Trump. During the Trump campaign, he donated millions of dollars to several Political Action Committees (PACs). His wife, former Senator Kelly Loeffler, currently heads the United States Government ' s Small Business Administration (SBA) and is considered an important member of the Trump camp. In the United States, the network is often considered to have additional symbolic significance in regulating the encryption industry, which is highly intertwined with the political environment。

120 MILLION USERS AND 10 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE. ICE WANTS TO PLAY RWA. WAR

IN THE AREA OF ENCRYPTION, ICE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST GROUPS OF TRADITIONAL FINANCIAL GIANTS TO ACT, BUT IT DID NOT PRODUCE THE DESIRED RESULTS。

In 2018, after the encryption market began to move into public view, ICE tried to go down in person and launched the encryption derivative platform Bakkt. The project was led by the wife of Jeffrey Sprecher, founder of ICE, and the then CEO's Kelly Loeffler himself. In another instance, ICE attempted to provide institutional investors with a set of channels for compliance and secure encrypted transactions, but eventually this pattern was & ldquo; the thunderstorm was small & rdquo。

TURNING AROUND AFTER 2025. AS INSTITUTIONAL FUNDS GRADUALLY FLOW TO THE ENCRYPTION MARKET AND THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT BECOMES CLEARER, ICE HAS BEGUN TO TAKE A STRATEGIC STEP BACK TO THE ENCRYPTION WORLD. THIS TIME, HOWEVER, ICE CHANGED ITS APPROACH AND NO LONGER ATTEMPTED TO BUILD FROM SCRATCH, BUT MOVED QUICKLY INTO CRITICAL AREAS THROUGH COOPERATION OR INVESTMENT。

For example, ICE has been able to predict markets by investing in Polymarket quickly into the chain, and has joined forces with Circe and Chainlink to advance the bottom-up construction of RWA。

IN PARTICULAR, RWA IS SEEN BY ICE AS AN IMPORTANT DIRECTION FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF CAPITAL MARKETS. AS ONE OF THE LARGEST GLOBAL TRADING BLOCS, ICE OPERATES THE NYSE. BUT THIS EXCHANGE, WHICH HAS MORE THAN 200 YEARS OF HISTORY, IS FACING NEW COMPETITIVE PRESSURES IN RECENT YEARS. NASDAQ IS GRADUALLY GAINING ADVANTAGE, BOTH IN TERMS OF VOLUME OF TRANSACTIONS AND IN ATTRACTING TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES TO THE MARKET。

MORE CRITICALLY, IN SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR, NASDAQ SUBMITTED A PROPOSAL TO THE SEC SEEKING APPROVAL FOR TRADING AND CLEARING THE MONETIZED VERSIONS OF NASDAQ SHARES AND ETP AS A MAJOR TRANSFORMATION OF ITS OPERATIONS。

IN THE FACE OF THIS TREND, ICE HAS ALSO BEGUN TO ACCELERATE ACTION。

In January this year, the New York office announced the development of a monetized securities platform based on block chains. As planned, the platform supports the United States 7× trades on a 24-hour basis and achieves an immediate T+0 settlement. In design, monetized shares will have the same dividends and governance power as traditional securities. In order to achieve round-the-clock financial flows, NYSE did not choose a currency stabilization programme, but planned to work with BNY Mellon, Citibank and others to introduce token deposits。

IN ORDER TO SPEED UP THE RWA OPERATION, ICE FOCUSED ITS ATTENTION ON OKX, WHICH HAS 120 MILLION ACTIVE USERS AND 10 YEARS OF DEEP TILLING ENCRYPTION。

In the United States local market, the Coinbase, Kraken and others dominate compliance, but OkX is more active and larger in terms of global retail users; at the same time, OKX has wider encryption coverage than a financial service platform such as Robinwood, and performance in terms of spot transactions, derivatives and chained products is high, and has a decade-old product experience。

According to Forbes, OKX's global business management partner, Haider Rafique, travelled to Atlanta last summer for a four-hour dialogue with ICE founder Jeffrey Sprecher, “ we have a good chemical reaction in terms of the world, the future of monetized securities, how derivatives move to the global stage, and how traditional finance and digital assets integrate。

Jeffrey Sprecher has also publicly stated that OkX has an enormous distribution capacity and that ICE will use a slight relationship to expand its global retail users and accelerate plans to provide chain infrastructure and monetized assets to United States investors. And Star has experience in creating successful companies。

UNDER THE COOPERATIVE ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES, OKX WILL AUTHORIZE REAL-TIME ENCRYPTION OF ASSET PRICE DATA TO ICE, ON THE BASIS OF WHICH ICE PLANS TO LAUNCH ENCRYPTED FUTURES PRODUCTS; AT THE SAME TIME, ICE WILL ALSO OPEN THE MONETIZATION CHANNEL FOR NEW YORK-LISTED ASSETS TO OKX, WHICH WILL ALLOW USERS TO DIRECTLY TRADE NEW YORK-BASED DOLLARIZED STOCKS AND RELATED DERIVATIVES ON THE PLATFORM. THE FUNCTIONALITY IS EXPECTED TO BE ONLINE IN THE SECOND HALF OF 2026. IN ADDITION, THE PARTIES WILL ADVANCE THE STRUCTURED LINK BETWEEN LIQUIDATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT PROGRAMMES, MULTI-CHAIN HOSTING AND WALLET STRUCTURES, AND INSTITUTIONAL CONFIDENCE IN PARTICIPATING IN THE DIGITAL ASSET MARKET。

In line with this strategy, OKX also plans to strengthen its presence in the United States, which, according to Rafique, is considering moving up to 2,000 employees to the United States, without disclosing a specific timetable。

Ten years after investing in Coinbase, why is ICE back on the exchange

According to publicly available information, OKX has so far completed four rounds of financing. The three rounds of financing up to 2017 ranged from millions to tens of millions of dollars, but no specific valuation was disclosed at that time. However, as previously reported by PANews, in 2019, the equivalent valuation of some investors when they exited was approximately $200 million when the KOKX predecessor, KOKCoin parent company, OKC Holdings Corporation, landed in the port stock market。

OVER THE YEARS, THE OKX VALUATION HAS RISEN SIGNIFICANTLY TO $25 BILLION, WHICH IS UNDERPINNED BY THE EXPANSION OF ITS OWN BUSINESS AND THE TRANSITION OF MORE ENCRYPTED ASSETS TO THE MAINSTREAM。

IN THIS ROUND OF FINANCING, OKX AND ICE HAVE NOT OFFICIALLY DISCLOSED SPECIFIC FUND-RAISING AMOUNTS. HOWEVER, ACCORDING TO INFORMATION SOURCES CITED BY BLOOMBERG, ICE INVESTED ABOUT $200 MILLION IN OKX. IN TERMS OF SCALE OF FUNDING, THIS INVESTMENT REPRESENTS A COMMITMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL BUSINESS CHANGE AND A TREND TOWARDS INDUSTRY MATURITY。

In fact, this was not the first time ICE had invested in an encrypted exchange. As early as 2015, ICE had made a forward-looking investment in Coinbase, receiving 1.4 per cent of its shares, and had opted to withdraw in full after it had been listed in Coinbase in 2021, a successful case of encrypted investment。

TEN YEARS LATER, ICE CHOSE TO INVEST IN OKX, AND, IN ADDITION TO ITS OWN LAYOUT IN ENCRYPTION, THE MARKET GENERALLY AGREED THAT ICE ALSO SAW THE POTENTIAL RETURN SPACE。

Coinbase has been listed on the United States-listed encryption exchange and currently has a market value of about $54 billion. While OKX is close to Coinbase in terms of volume and size of global transactions, market valuation is much lower than Coinbase. There is still room for further improvement in the valuation if future OKX succeeds in accessing United States capital markets. There are differences in terms of business integration, distribution capacity, strategic positioning, etc., or with ICE at encryption facilities planned for IPOs, such as Kraken, Upbit, Gmini。

WHILE OKX HAS RELEASED SIGNALS TO THE U.S. IPOS, ADDING TO THE INCREASING INTEREST OF THE CURRENT CAPITAL MARKET IN THE RWA NARRATIVE, ITS VALUATION LOGIC COULD BE RE-PRICING IF OKX COULD BECOME AN IMPORTANT DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL FOR THE MONETIZED ASSETS OF THE NYU. IN OTHER WORDS, ONCE OXK IS ON THE MARKET IN THE FUTURE OR VALUATIONS ARE UP, ICE WILL NOT ONLY BE ABLE TO ACHIEVE BUSINESS SYNERGIES, BUT MAY ALSO HAVE SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT RETURNS。

THE INTRODUCTION OF ICE IS MORE REALISTIC FOR OKX. OKX IS TRYING TO RE-ENTER THE UNITED STATES MARKET, AND LAST YEAR IT AGREED TO PAY CLOSE TO $500 MILLION IN SETTLEMENT PAYMENTS TO SETTLE LITIGATION. THIS WAS SEEN AS AN IMPORTANT STEP IN THE REPROFILING OF THE UNITED STATES BY OKX。

AGAINST THIS BACKGROUND, THE SHAREHOLDING OF TRADITIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS SUCH AS ICE IS MORE CREDITWORTHY. NOT ONLY DOES ICE HAVE AN INFLUENTIAL AND MATURE COMPLIANCE SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES FINANCIAL SYSTEM, AS THE PARENT OF NEW YORK HOUSE, BUT IT WILL HELP TO REDUCE THE REGULATORY UNCERTAINTY THAT OKX FACES IN THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES。

OKX CEO Star also stated that for OKX, this cooperation also marked a new chapter in its march into the United States market. In many ways, OKX sees its business in the United States as a piece of paper, an opportunity to deliberately build, engage constructively with regulators and related institutions, and contribute to building market infrastructure that meets global standards for the most mature capital markets。

FOR ICE AND OKX, THIS COOPERATION COULD ALSO BE AN IMPORTANT DRAWBACK IN THE NEXT ROUND OF FINANCIAL COMPETITIONS。