According to Xu Mingxing @star_okx, OKX isn’t short on cash at all, so why did they choose to raise funds at this time? Yesterday, OKX announced the completion of a $25 billion funding round (equity financing, not just fundraising). Investors include Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered Bank, and the London-based quant firm QRT. In fact, these companies all have deep integrations and business relationships with OKX: - The stablecoin leader Circle—issuer of USDC—has already integrated with OKX for spot trading, leverage, and futures. - Ripple—provider of payment and liquidity infrastructure—has its RLUSD trading on OKX’s unified order book. - Standard Chartered Bank—starting October 2024, it will serve as the third-party custodian for OKX’s institutional business and provide custody for the tokenized U.S. Treasury fund BUIDL under the collateral framework co-developed by OKX and BlackRock. The focus of these companies? Stablecoins, payments, banking custody, and collateral—key areas for global development now and in the future. To put it simply, this is about equity-izing stablecoins, custody, and liquidity relationships. The goal is to stabilize these critical areas to align with compliance standards, settlement pathways, and collateral rules, creating a more robust participant structure for the tokenized market and institutional collateral framework co-launched with ICE. So, the purpose isn’t just to raise cash or boost valuation. (Earlier this year, in March, the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), invested about $200 million.) One more thing worth mentioning: keep an eye on OKB. There’s still a significant gap between the $25 billion equity valuation and the market cap of the OKB token. For now, the equity financing hasn’t translated into the token’s value.