The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), has recently shown much more interest in cryptocurrencies than in previous years, first investing $2 billion in Polymarket, pushing the valuation of the leading prediction market to $9 billion, and immediately investing in the cryptocurrency trading platform OKX, raising the valuation of this well-known trading platform in Chinese-speaking regions to about $25 billion.
OKX is about to go public in the United States, which is no longer news. ICE's investment, coupled with the upcoming U.S. listing, is as Fortune says, OKX is about to successfully transform from an offshore trading platform in East Asia into a global trading hub operating in compliance with U.S. regulations.
In simple terms, the United States will be OKX's new home.
The interesting point about this is that the U.S., a market that is basically completely vacant for the world's largest trading platform Binance, has already seen several giants preparing to make a big move.
Coinbase, currently the number one trading platform in the U.S., is backed by BlackRock, and its CEO has become tough enough to stand firm against the entire industry.
Kraken, the second-largest compliant trading platform, is rumored to have an IPO in the first quarter.
Upbit is also about to go public in the U.S., has very strong profitability, and managed to recover from a theft of $3,600 within just two weeks.
Of course, there are also Gemini, Bullish, and others that are already listed but have lower visibility, as well as the soon-to-be-listed OKX.
So, is a $25 billion valuation expensive?
According to data compiled by BlockBeats regarding trading platforms in 2025, OKX's $25 billion dollar valuation does not seem expensive.
The spot trading volume of Coinbase is comparable to that of OKX, but its contract trading volume is virtually non-existent, with a market value of $55 billion, which is double that of OKX.
Kraken is beaten in both spot and contract volume by OKX, with a valuation of $20 billion, only 20% lower than OKX’s valuation; Upbit, while being the largest in South Korea, also lacks a contract segment and appears to have far less profitability than OKX, with a valuation of $10.7 billion, more than double that of Upbit.
Robinhood boasts 23 million users, but the trading volume disclosed for its Crypto segment in 2025 is only $82 billion, which is not comparable.
Clearly, from the data, the $25 billion valuation is underestimated. The publicly available user count shows that OKX already has the most users, and this is mostly without any U.S. users. Looking at the user numbers for Coinbase and Kraken, OKX theoretically still has tens of millions of new users to tap into.
In other words, the U.S. stock market is about to welcome a trading platform with a user count that is expected to be twice that of Coinbase, an overall trading volume that is much greater than Coinbase's, but with a valuation of only half that of Coinbase.
It is still unclear when OKX will go public; from the looks on Polymarket, it seems unlikely to list this year. There were earlier rumors suggesting that OKX's listing time could be pushed to 2028, hoping that it would be a year with much more hope for cryptocurrencies than now.
Whether there is hope depends on the narrative, which is also where ICE values this investment. Reports indicate that this investment aims to promote the development of blockchain-based stock trading, that is, tokenization of stocks.
OKX's founder and CEO Star also stated the same intent, saying that OKX plans to provide access to ICE's U.S. futures market and NYSE's tokenized stock market for its over 120 million global users, exploring the integration path between traditional financial markets and digital asset infrastructure within a compliant framework.
The merger of Tradfi and Crypto is no longer a question of whether it will happen, but to what extent it will merge. A platform that saw this trend several years ago believed that the biggest competitor in the future would definitely be NASDAQ, so they set out to create an on-chain NASDAQ, achieving a valuation of $32 billion. Unfortunately, they took a wrong step, but the on-chain NASDAQ is an inevitable path for Crypto; it just remains to be seen who can seize the first seat in this new narrative.
OKX's growth journey certainly has had many twists and turns, but it is still a good story.
It is still a Chinese entrepreneur who just turned 41 this year, founded in 2013, underwent three brand transformations, faced scrutiny from multiple countries over its large operations, and had to pay a $500 million fine to the U.S. Department of Justice, ultimately culminating in a good story of ringing the bell in the U.S.
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