Overview
- The two firms announced on June 22 that they have created an equally owned joint venture to develop infrastructure for tokenized securities and blockchain-native financial products.
- The venture will be co-chaired by former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and ICE futures executive Trabue Bland, with Cuomo saying the project will extend NYSE-linked markets to crypto users via smartphones.
- The partners say the new company intends to register in the United States as a broker-dealer and a futures commission merchant, the licensed entities that legally handle securities trades and customer funds, and those registrations are the immediate regulatory gate to launching services.
- The deal follows ICE’s March minority investment in OKX of roughly $200 million and arrives after OKX’s 2025 guilty plea and roughly $500 million settlement with U.S. authorities, facts the venture will need to address in its U.S. filings.
- If regulators approve the structure, the joint venture could give large-scale retail access to regulated futures and tokenized equities and open paths for tokenized bonds and other real-world assets while accelerating the integration of traditional market plumbing with crypto distribution.