Crypto exchange OKX valuation hits $25 billion after NYSE parent invests

March 5 (Reuters) - OKX, one ‌of the world's ​largest ​cryptocurrency exchanges, was valued at $25 billion after it received a minority investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the NYSE parent said ‌on Thursday.

The investment, which values OKX well above recent market ⁠entrants Bullish and Gemini, underscores how major Wall Street institutions are racing to develop ‌digital-asset infrastructure as crypto evolves ‌into a key segment of mainstream finance.

Some details about the strategic tie-up:

* ICE will license OKX's spot crypto prices and launchU.S.-regulated futures contracts. * ​OKX will become a distributor of ICE's U.S. futures andtokenized equities markets to more than 120 million peopleglobally. * The investment follows ⁠ICE's recent stake in Polymarket,the world's largest prediction market. * Analysts say the crypto industry may have ​reached aninflection point that could mark the end of the bear marketafter U.S. President Donald Trump signaled support for ​theClarity Act bill on Tuesday. * "There was a ‌time window to get Clarity done. It's lookingmore and more challenging as time goes by and we get ⁠closer tomidterms. Maybe we should have accepted the market structurebill and then pushed amendments later on," OKX Global ManagingPartner Haider Rafique told Reuters. * OKX rival Kraken's ⁠banking unit became the first U.S.digital-asset bank to gain access to the Federal Reserve'spayments ​system through a limited-purpose account on Wednesday,marking a major win for an industry that has for years soughtaccess to the Fed's trillions of dollars of payment rails. * "I ‌think it's very likely we will go in that direction inthe future, and I hope it doesn't take ‌us six years to do it,"Rafique said. * ICE, which was also an ⁠early investor in Coinbase, willget ‌a seat on OKX ​board. The terms of the investment were notdisclosed.

(Reporting by Ateev Bhandari and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by ‌Shilpi Majumdar)

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