Ripple, Circle, Standard Chartered Back Crypto Exchange OKX at $25B Valuation

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX secured strategic investments from Ripple, Circle (NYSE:CRCL), Qube Research & Technologies and SC Ventures by Standard Chartered at a $25 billion pre-money valuation.

This will strengthen the exchange’s institutional ties as it expands into stablecoins, payments and tokenized real-world assets.

"The exchange was our starting point, and we are evolving into a broader global financial technology platform," OKX founder and CEO Star Xu said.

The latest investment extends a strategic round led in March by Intercontinental Exchange (NASDAQ:ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

How Each Investor Supports One OKX Layer

On Tuesday, OKX said the new investors represent key pieces of the institutional crypto stack spanning stablecoin issuance, liquidity, payments and custody.

Circle issues USDC (CRYPTO: USDC), while Ripple provides payments and liquidity infrastructure and has integrated its RLUSD (CRYPTO: RLUSD) stablecoin into OKX’s unified order book.

QRT is an institutional counterparty providing liquidity and risk capacity, while Standard Chartered serves as custodian for BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund under a collateral framework developed with OKX.