Intercontinental Exchange and OKX will build a U.S. broker-dealer to route OKX’s customers into NYSE tokenized equities and ICE futures, pending regulatory approval.
Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, and crypto exchange OKX are forming a 50-50 joint venture to bring NYSE-listed equities on-chain. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will co-chair the venture.
The two companies announced the venture Monday in a joint statement. Pending regulatory approval, the venture is expected to operate as a U.S. registered broker-dealer and futures commission merchant, giving OKX’s customers in the U.S. and abroad access to ICE futures and NYSE tokenized equities. ICE will co-chair the venture alongside Cuomo, who began working with OKX in 2023 and served as New York’s 56th governor. The structure follows ICE’s March investment in OKX, which valued the exchange at $25 billion.
Wall Street Onchain
The venture pairs one of the most established names in regulated market infrastructure with an exchange that serves more than 120 million customers. ICE operates the NYSE, multiple futures and options exchanges, and clearing houses, and it carries a Fortune 500 designation. The press release said the venture will focus on “building next-generation infrastructure for tokenized and digitally native financial products” and will explore further regulated, blockchain-enabled markets.
OKX-side framing put the target plainly. The project will focus on taking NYSE-listed assets and tokenizing them, an OKX spokesperson told Fortune, which also reported that ICE Senior Vice President Trabue Bland will co-chair the project with Cuomo.
Cuomo’s Crypto Turn
“You can virtually walk through the front door of the New York Stock Exchange through your smartphone, and you can do that seven days a week in a way you never could before,” Cuomo told Fortune. The former governor, who lost the 2025 New York City mayoral race, said he would spend the majority of his time overseeing the venture.
Cuomo began advising OKX in 2023, Fortune reported. OKX pleaded guilty in 2025 to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering laws and agreed to a $500 million settlement before relaunching in the United States.
The Tier-1 Onramp
ICE’s move extends a run of Wall Street incumbents wiring equities onto public chains. The exchange operator already sat among the institutional backers of Circle’s Arc blockchain presale, and Citi has projected a $5.5 trillion tokenized-securities market by 2030 with DTCC, Nasdaq and ICE all named as participants. OKX has separately built out tokenized-equity exposure, adding Magnificent 7 stocks to its European perpetuals lineup.
The regulatory path is the gate. The venture’s broker-dealer and FCM registration remains subject to approval, and a SEC trading-division framework for tokenized securities is still taking shape. Neither company has put a public start date on when the joint venture would begin operating.
