Is OKX's $25 Billion Valuation Really Justified?

By: blockbeats|2026/03/05 23:00:01

The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), has recently shown much greater interest in cryptocurrency than in previous years. First, it invested $2 billion in Polymarket, pushing the leading prediction market's valuation to $90 billion. It then quickly invested in the cryptocurrency exchange platform OKX, raising the valuation of this well-known platform in the Chinese-speaking region to around $25 billion.

OKX is about to be listed in the U.S., which is no longer news. ICE's investment, combined with the upcoming U.S. listing, as Fortune puts it, is transforming OKX from an East Asian offshore trading platform to a globally compliant hub operating in the United States.

In simple terms, the United States will be OKX's new home.

What's interesting about this is that the United States, a market that was virtually blank for the world's largest exchange platform, Binance, has now seen several giants gearing up to make a big impact.

Coinbase, the current leading U.S. exchange platform, with BlackRock's support, has a CEO who is tough enough to challenge the entire industry.

Kraken, the second oldest compliant trading platform, is rumored to be going public in the first quarter.

Upbit is also about to be listed in the U.S., with strong earning potential. After being robbed of $36 million, it could recover the amount in just two weeks.

Of course, there are also already listed but relatively low-profile platforms like Gemini, Bullish, and others, as well as the upcoming listing of OKX.

So, is a $25 billion valuation expensive?

Is OKX's 5 Billion Valuation Really Justified?

According to BlockBeats' analysis of exchange platforms in 2025, OKX's $25 billion valuation doesn't seem expensive.

Coinbase has a spot trading volume similar to OKX but almost no futures trading volume, with a market cap of $55 billion, double that of OKX.

Kraken is lagging behind OKX in both spot and futures trading volumes, with a $20 billion valuation, only 20% lower than OKX's valuation; while Upbit, despite being South Korea's largest, lacks tether-usdt-257">USDT">a futures section, and its earning potential seems far less than OKX's. Upbit has a $10.7 billion valuation, making OKX's valuation more than double that of Upbit's.

Robinhood has 23 million users, but the disclosed Crypto section's trading volume for 2025 is only $82 billion, making it incomparable.

Apparently, looking at the data, 250 billion is underestimated, considering the publicly available user count. OKX is already the largest in terms of users, and this is basically without any U.S. users yet. Considering the user count of Coinbase and Kraken, OKX theoretically has tens of millions of new users to tap into.

This means that the U.S. stock market is about to welcome a user base that will be twice that of Coinbase, with an overall trading volume much larger than Coinbase, yet valued at only half of Coinbase's trading platform.

The listing time for OKX is currently unknown. Based on Polymarket, it seems unlikely to list this year. There have been some rumors suggesting that OKX's listing time might be in 2028, hopefully a year much more promising for cryptocurrency than the present.

The hopefulness depends on the narrative, which is also what ICE values in this investment. Reports indicate that this investment aims to drive the development of blockchain-based stock trading, in other words, stock tokenization.

OKX's founder and CEO, Star, shares the same sentiment. He mentioned that OKX plans to provide its global user base of over 1.2 billion with access to ICE's U.S. futures market and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tokenized stock market opportunities, exploring a path for the convergence of traditional financial markets and digital asset infrastructure within a compliant framework.

The integration of Tradfi and Crypto is no longer a question of possibility but rather a question of the extent of integration. There was once a platform that saw this trend a few years ago and envisioned that the ultimate competitor in the future must be Nasdaq. Thus, they aimed to create an on-chain Nasdaq, reaching a valuation of 32 billion USD. Unfortunately, they took a wrong step. Nevertheless, an on-chain Nasdaq is Crypto's inevitable path, and now it is a race to see who will secure the leading position in this new narrative.

OKX's growth journey certainly has had many twists and turns, but it remains a great story.

Still, he is a Chinese entrepreneur who has just turned 41 this year, founding the company in 2013, undergoing three rebranding efforts, expanding the business to be regulated by multiple countries, and having to pay a $500 million fine to the U.S. Department of Justice, ultimately culminating in a successful listing in the U.S.

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Mixin has launched USTD-margined perpetual contracts, bringing derivative trading into the chat scene.

The privacy-focused crypto wallet Mixin announced today the launch of its U-based perpetual contract (a derivative priced in USDT). Unlike traditional exchanges, Mixin has taken a new approach by "liberating" derivative trading from isolated matching engines and embedding it into the instant messaging environment.

Users can directly open positions within the app with leverage of up to 200x, while sharing positions, discussing strategies, and copy trading within private communities. Trading, social interaction, and asset management are integrated into the same interface.

Simplified Trading Experience: No KYC Required, Opening a Position in Five Steps

Based on its non-custodial architecture, Mixin has eliminated friction from the traditional onboarding process, allowing users to participate in perpetual contract trading without identity verification.

The trading process has been streamlined into five steps:

· Choose the trading asset

· Select long or short

· Input position size and leverage

· Confirm order details

· Confirm and open the position

The interface provides real-time visualization of price, position, and profit and loss (PnL), allowing users to complete trades without switching between multiple modules.

Social-Native Trading: Strategy and Execution Completed in the Same Context

Mixin has directly integrated social features into the derivative trading environment. Users can create private trading communities and interact around real-time positions:

· End-to-end encrypted private groups supporting up to 1024 members

· End-to-end encrypted voice communication

· One-click position sharing

· One-click trade copying

On the execution side, Mixin aggregates liquidity from multiple sources and accesses decentralized protocol and external market liquidity through a unified trading interface.

By combining social interaction with trade execution, Mixin enables users to collaborate, share, and execute trading strategies instantly within the same environment.

Referral Mechanism: Non-institutional users can receive up to 60% fee split

Mixin has also introduced a referral incentive system based on trading behavior:

· Users can join with an invite code

· Up to 60% of trading fees as referral rewards

· Incentive mechanism designed for long-term, sustainable earnings

This model aims to drive user-driven network expansion and organic growth.

Self-Custody Architecture and Built-in Privacy Mechanism

Mixin's derivative transactions are built on top of its existing self-custody wallet infrastructure, with core features including:

· Separation of transaction account and asset storage

· User full control over assets

· Platform does not custody user funds

· Built-in privacy mechanisms to reduce data exposure

The system aims to strike a balance between transaction efficiency, asset security, and privacy protection.

A New Path for On-Chain Derivatives

Against the background of perpetual contracts becoming a mainstream trading tool, Mixin is exploring a different development direction by lowering barriers, enhancing social and privacy attributes.

The platform does not only view transactions as execution actions but positions them as a networked activity: transactions have social attributes, strategies can be shared, and relationships between individuals also become part of the financial system.

Regulatory Background

Mixin's design is based on a user-initiated, user-controlled model. The platform neither custodies assets nor executes transactions on behalf of users.

This model aligns with a statement issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 13, 2026, titled "Staff Statement on Whether Partial User Interface Used in Preparing Cryptocurrency Securities Transactions May Require Broker-Dealer Registration."

The statement indicates that, under the premise where transactions are entirely initiated and controlled by users, non-custodial service providers that offer neutral interfaces may not need to register as broker-dealers or exchanges.

About Mixin

Mixin is a decentralized, self-custodial privacy wallet designed to provide secure and efficient digital asset management services.

Its core capabilities include:

· Aggregation: integrating multi-chain assets and routing between different transaction paths to simplify user operations

· High liquidity access: connecting to various liquidity sources, including decentralized protocols and external markets

· Decentralization: achieving full user control over assets without relying on custodial intermediaries

· Privacy protection: safeguarding assets and data through MPC, CryptoNote, and end-to-end encrypted communication

Mixin has been in operation for over 8 years, supporting over 40 blockchains and more than 10,000 assets, with a global user base exceeding 10 million and an on-chain self-custodied asset scale of over $1 billion.

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