Crypto exchange OKX has raised new investment from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's venture arm, and trading firm Qube Research at a $25 billion pre-money valuation — a figure set before the new capital is counted — according to Decrypt's daily Morning Minute newsletter. The amount raised was not disclosed. The round extends a March investment from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, made at the same valuation.

OKX Lines Up Strategic Backers

The makeup of the latest backer group is notable. Circle issues the USDC stablecoin. Ripple runs a payments business and issues the RLUSD stablecoin. Standard Chartered holds the assets behind BlackRock's tokenized Treasury fund — a blockchain representation of a fund holding U.S. government debt — under an arrangement with OKX. Qube Research is already an OKX client providing trading capacity. Each new investor either competes in areas where OKX is headed or already does business with the exchange.

OKX founder Star Xu said the exchange was the company's starting point and that OKX is becoming a broader financial technology platform where customers can hold, spend, invest, and grow money in one place. Under that logic, buying into the people who own the pieces beats building them internally.

The ICE joint venture is the clearest evidence of that approach. OKXICE filed on Sunday to launch round-the-clock trading in tokenized shares of 63 U.S. companies — blockchain records that mirror conventional equities — running on OKX's own blockchain and settled with stablecoins, tokens designed to track the value of the U.S. dollar. In the same week, OKX launched a consumer app paying 10% on dollar stablecoins, and Xu said artificial intelligence now handles roughly 95% of the company's code at a cost of $10 million a month.

Whether tokenized stocks work is unsettled. Macquarie said this week it depends on attracting enough liquidity to keep prices reliable even at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, and that the SEC framework being temporary makes institutions reluctant to connect their systems. Both Macquarie and TD Securities expect early demand to come from retail investors, since institutions already have cheap access to U.S. stocks.

Every major exchange is making similar bets. Kraken's parent is spending billions to become financial infrastructure, while Coinbase has added perpetual futures — derivative contracts with no expiry date — tokenized stocks, and Bitcoin loans. Newsletter author Tyler Warner argued that tokenized stocks integrated within crypto trading infrastructure — including perps and 24/7 trading — will be a key theme of this cycle, and could substantially raise the market capitalization of the exchanges that figure it out and lead the sector.

Crypto and Macro Markets

Crypto majors fell 3-5% after a late-evening selloff. Bitcoin declined 3% to $83,600, Ethereum dropped 5% to $2,580, Solana fell 3% to $117, HYPE lost 5% to $89, and ZEC slid 5% to $1,310. Top altcoin movers included STX (+5%) and RAY (+8%). More than $540 million in crypto long positions — bets that prices would rise — were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with ETHations leading.

In traditional markets, oil rose 2% to $90, while gold slipped 1% to $4,140. Stock futures were lower as bonds continued to move higher, with the Dow down 0.5% and the Nasdaq down 0.6%.

ETF Flows and Corporate Treasuries

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $119 million in net inflows on Tuesday, while Ethereum ETFs saw $202 million in outflows. Separately, Robinhood put about $25 million of Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

Industry Headlines

• The Winklevoss twins filed for a Zcash ETF under the ticker WINK with a 0.25% fee. Their own fund signaled nonbinding interest in buying up to $100 million of shares, making it the third U.S. Zcash fund after Grayscale and Bitwise.
• Peter Thiel's Founders Fund led a $5 million token purchase in Anvil, with Pantera and Bullish joining. Anvil is a protocol that lets businesses back payment promises with crypto collateral rather than borrow against assets.
• Arbitrum joined Paxos's Global Dollar Network so it can earn a cut of the interest on stablecoins sitting on its network. USDG went live Tuesday across Morpho, GMX, Fluid, and Maple, with a proposal asking the DAO to put 100 million ARB behind the effort.
• Ledger launched Bitcoin-backed loans inside its wallet app, letting users borrow USDC or USDT without selling their coins. Every action is physically approved on the hardware device, and the feature runs on Morpho, the same lender behind Coinbase's version.
• South Africa's second-biggest bank, FNB, opened crypto trading to nearly 9 million customers through its existing share-trading app in partnership with local exchange VALR. Buyers can purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, or USDT from about 55 cents, but the coins cannot leave the bank's system.

Meme Coins and Onchain Protocols

Meme coin leaders were sharply lower: DOGE -7%, SHIB -8%, PEPE -6%, PENGU -10%, TRUMP -9%, SPX -8%, and BONK -10%.

Robinhood chain leaders were mixed: Pons gained 2% to $275 million, AI rose 12% to $124 million, and Cashcat fell 13% to $130 million, while v4 (+20%) and Note (+22%) led top movers. On Solana, top movers included Rari (+42x), Auton (+117x), Tweetcraft (+30x), and A1 (+12x).

Pump led onchain protocols in revenue with $2.74 million, followed by Hyperliquid at $1.92 million and StonkFun at $428,000.

Abstract, an Ethereum layer-2 network built for faster, cheaper transactions and linked to Pudgy Penguins, is shutting down on December 15 after its parent company lost tens of millions of dollars funding it. Roughly $47 million still sits on the chain, and anyone who does not move their funds will lose access to them.

NFTs

NFT leaders were mostly flat. Punks were even at 33 ETH, BAYC fell 1% to 5.85 ETH, and Pudgy Penguins rose 2% to 3.12 ETH. Claus (+20%) and PRTSCN (+39%) led top movers.