OKX raises at $25B valuation as tokenized stocks venue files with SEC

Crypto exchange OKX compressed a quarter's worth of announcements into one week. On October 6 it brought in four strategic backers — Ripple, QRT, Circle and Standard Chartered's venture arm — at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, unveiled a standalone stablecoin app called OKX Money, and two days earlier its joint venture with NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange filed with the SEC to run a round-the-clock venue for tokenized U.S. stocks. Three moves in seven days, all pointing one way: OKX is rebuilding itself as a full financial platform.

The valuation held flat at $25 billion for seven months — ICE's March investment, reported by Bloomberg at roughly $200 million, was priced at the same figure. Every investor was already wired into OKX's plumbing: Circle issues USDC, integrated across the platform; Ripple's RLUSD trades on its unified order book; QRT is a major institutional counterparty supplying liquidity and risk capacity; and the bank's venture unit custodies BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund inside a collateral framework OKX launched with BlackRock in April.

Star Xu called the exchange "our starting point", saying the fresh capital goes to growth and to tokenizing real-world assets.

Why it matters

The tokenized-stocks filing is the heavier move. OKXICE, the 50-50 joint venture formed in June 2026, notified the SEC on October 4 that it intends to run a Tokenized Securities Venue under the agency's Innovation Exemption — a temporary five-year order letting qualifying venues trade tokenized U.S. stocks without registering as full exchanges. The notice covers 63 NYSE-listed names, from Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Tesla to JPMorgan, Coca-Cola, Coinbase and SpaceX, each token representing one actual share carrying the same dividend and voting rights.

Trading would run 24 hours a day, weekends included, on X Layer — OKX's own blockchain — through permissioned Uniswap v4 pools settled in USDC, USDG or USDT, open only to verified self-custodial wallets. Issuers get 30 days to opt out, so the earliest possible launch is early November. It moves tokenized equities onshore: OKX already lists 70+ such tickers for non-U.S. customers under offshore rules; this would be one of the first regulated U.S. venues, co-chaired by Andrew Cuomo and ICE futures chief Trabue Bland.

The third leg, OKX Money, goes after a different market. Unveiled at the OKX Now event in Singapore on October 6, it's a standalone app that turns dollar-pegged stablecoins into everyday money — save, send, spend — aimed at emerging markets across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Users fund it in more than 50 local currencies, hold USDG, USDC or USDT with zero-fee conversion between them, earn up to 10% APY on eligible USDG balances, and spend through virtual and physical Mastercard cards with zero foreign-exchange fees and up to 10% cashback. OKX says roughly 70% of its target users have never touched a crypto app. It lands as institutions deepen crypto ties — Coinbase Prime now custodies the U.S. government's Bitcoin — while traders reel from $547 million in liquidations this week.