Morning Minute: OKX Raises at $25B From Circle, Ripple, and StanChart

By Tyler Warner

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' covering all of the top stories and market action.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall 3-5% after evening selloff; BTC at $83.6k
• Over $550M in crypto longs liquidated, led by ETH
• BTC ETFs see $119M in inflows, but $202M in outflows for ETH
• OKX raises at $25B with funds from Circle, Ripple and others
• Abstract announces it is shutting down its L2 on December 15

💰 OKX Raises at $25B From Circle, Ripple, and StanChart

OKX took new investment from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered’s venture arm, and trading firm Qube Research at a $25 billion pre-money valuation. The amount wasn’t disclosed. It extends a March investment from Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, at the same price.

This round of backers is quite notable for OKX. Circle issues USDC. Ripple runs payments and issues RLUSD. Standard Chartered holds the assets behind BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund under an arrangement with OKX. Qube is already an OKX client providing trading capacity. Every one of them either competes with where OKX is headed or already does business with it.

That’s the strategy. Star Xu said the exchange was the starting point and the company is becoming a broader financial technology platform where customers hold, spend, invest, and grow money in one place. Buying into the people who own the pieces beats building them.

The ICE joint venture is the clearest evidence. OKXICE filed Sunday to launch round-the-clock trading in tokenized shares of 63 U.S. companies, running on OKX’s own blockchain and settled with stablecoins. The same week, OKX launched a consumer app paying 10% on dollar stablecoins, and Xu said AI 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 at 3am 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, since institutions already have cheap access to U.S. stocks.

So where does this leave us? Every major exchange is making similar bets. Kraken’s parent is spending billions to become financial infrastructure. Coinbase added perps, tokenized stocks, and Bitcoin loans. It’s clear that tokenized stocks integrated within crypto trading infrastructure (perps, 24/7 trading) will be a key theme of this cycle. And it will raise the market cap for those who figure it out, and lead the sector, substantially.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red down 3-5% after a late evening selloff; BTC -3% at $83.6k; ETH -5% at $2,580; SOL -3% at $117; HYPE -5% at $89; ZEC -5% at $1,310
• Top alt movers include STX (+5%) and RAY (+8%)
• Oil +2% at $90; Gold -1% at $4,140
• Stock futures are red as bonds keep going higher; DOW -0.5%, Nasdaq -0.6%
• Crypto saw over $540M in long liquidations over the past 24 hours, with ETH liquidations leading
• 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 this 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, a protocol that lets businesses back payment promises with crypto collateral rather than borrow against it
• 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 it
• Ledger launched Bitcoin-backed loans inside its wallet app letting users borrow USDC or USDT without selling their coins; every action gets physically approved on the hardware device, and it runs on Morpho, the same lender behind Coinbase's version
• South Africa's 2nd 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 get Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, or USDT from about 55 cents, but the coins can't leave the bank's system

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $119M in net inflows on Tuesday; the ETH ETFs saw $202M in outflows

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were very red; DOGE -7%, SHIB -8%, PEPE -6%, PENGU -10%, TRUMP -9%, SPX -8%, BONK -10%
• Robinhood chain leaders were mixed; Pons +2% to $275M; AI +12% at $124M; Cashcat -13% at $130M; v4 +20% and Note +22% led top movers
• Solana top movers included Rari +42x, Auton +117x, Tweetcraft +30x, and A1 +12x

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Pump led onchain protocols in revenue with $2.74M; Hyperliquid was next with $1.92M and StonkFun at $428k
• Pudgy Penguins’ Ethereum network Abstract is shutting down December 15 after its parent company lost tens of millions funding it; roughly $47 million still sits on the chain and anyone who doesn’t move their money loses access to it
• Robinhood put about $25 million of Bitcoin on its balance sheet

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 33 ETH, BAYC -1% at 5.85 ETH, Pudgy +2% at 3.12 ETH
• Claus (+20%) and PRTSCN (+39%) led top movers

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