By CARLO BOFFA, EU Correspondent
FORMER New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is leading a joint venture between the New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange and crypto marketplace OKX that aims to bridge traditional and digital finance.
The partnership is the latest sign of traditional finance’s embrace of digital assets in the US during President Donald Trump’s second term, as Cuomo becomes the latest in a series of politicians from both parties to be involved with digital asset markets.
“The next chapter of financial markets will be defined by how well innovation and government regulation can move forward together,” said Cuomo, who lost the New York mayoral election last year.
“This partnership brings together OKX’s world-class blockchain technology and ICE’s trusted market infrastructure to help build a more modern, transparent, and resilient financial system for the future.”
The 50-50 joint venture will operate as a registered broker and futures commission merchant subject to regulatory approval.
It will give OKX’s customers around the world access to ICE futures and NYSE tokenised equities markets.
The new firm will also explore adjacent opportunities for regulatory-compliant blockchain-enabled markets, ICE said in a statement.
The partnership follows an initial investment by ICE into OKX in March, which valued the crypto trading firm at $25 billion.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani seized on Cuomo’s behind-the-scenes advisory work for OKX during the mayoral campaign, at a time when the crypto exchange was under federal investigation.
OKX paid penalties in 2025 totalling more than half a billion US dollars after pleading guilty to operating without a licence in the US.
ICE is just the latest major exchange to seek to incorporate blockchain into its operations. Nasdaq partnered in March with Kraken owner Payward to launch an equity token platform, a new approach to tokenising equities.
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