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QRT joins OKX's existing backers at the $25 billion price ICE set in March
Qube Research & Technologies joined Circle, Ripple and SC Ventures in funding OKX at $25 billion, the valuation ICE paid in March. Whether that price was cheap depends on OKX's ICE joint venture winning approval to list tokenized shares of 63 U.S. companies.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- Circle, Ripple and SC Ventures were already OKX shareholders, which leaves QRT as the only new name on the cap table.
- The round extends the March one, in which ICE put around $200 million into OKX in a deal framed around tokenized securities.
- The SEC exemption OKXICE would use lets venues trade full-rights stock tokens on public blockchains for up to five years without registering as an exchange.
- OKB, the OKX ecosystem token, rose about 6% to $138 on the financing news.
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Why it matters
- cost Buyers paid nothing extra for seven months of joint-venture work, so the payoff or loss from the approval decision falls on holders at the same price ICE paid.
- constraint The 63-name request is the most OKXICE can get. The per-venue cap and issuer objections can only shorten the list the new money is paying for.
- constraint OKX's existing stock perpetuals track prices and fall outside the exemption, so the equity venue the round is priced on has to be built from tokens that carry dividends and votes.
An extension at the original price is the March deal reopened to more buyers, seven months after it closed [1][5]. What it records is who chose to buy more at that price. The only new name, QRT, is a Credit Suisse spinout that already runs a crypto fund holding about $1 billion [3][11].
OKX declined to say how much the extension raised [4], so ICE's check is the only scale available. Around $200 million at $25 billion is roughly 0.8% of the company, assuming the mark is post-money [16]. The money "focuses on strengthening OKX's long-term market infrastructure," Haider Rafique, the exchange's global managing partner, said in a statement [6]. Thomas Eaton, a quantitative trading director at QRT, said the investment reflects confidence in "the long-term growth of digital assets and 24/7 markets" [12].
The most concrete piece of that infrastructure is OKXICE LLC, which said Monday it is seeking approval to sell tokenized stock in 63 U.S. public companies, Nvidia, Apple and Coca-Cola among them [7]. The SEC introduced the exemption it would use in September, days after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate [8]. Its terms narrow the product before launch. Each venue faces a cap on how many stocks it can list, and issuers get 30 days to object to a third party tokenizing their shares, so each of those three companies can keep its stock off the venue [13]. Synthetics that merely track a price are excluded [10].
The round can turn out three ways. If approval arrives with most of the 63 names intact, the holders who added this month bought into a licensed venue at March's price. If issuers object or the cap binds, they paid the same price for a shorter list. If approval drags, OKX's equity business stays where it is now, in perpetual futures on Magnificent Seven stocks and the S&P 500 [14].
I think the round is mostly existing holders adding to a position on an SEC decision, at the price ICE set. The counter-case comes from QRT's own statement: "24/7 markets" describes trading, and a firm with a $1 billion crypto fund has reasons to own part of an exchange with or without tokenized stock [11][12]. The reports do not include OKX's trading volumes or revenue, so the exchange-growth reading cannot be tested against them. A priced round above $25 billion before OKXICE wins approval would mean buyers are paying for the exchange itself, and would make this view wrong.
What to watch
- The SEC's decision on OKXICE's application, and the listing cap it sets against the 63 names requested.
- Any disclosure of the extension's size, measured against ICE's roughly $200 million in March.