Andrew Cuomo Tapped to Co-Chair OKX-ICE Crypto Joint Venture

Andrew Cuomo will co-chair a joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, the companies disclosed Monday. The former New York governor takes the role as ICE's strategic push into crypto markets reaches its highest-profile political appointment to date.

Cuomo will share the chair with Trabue Bland, ICE's senior vice president of futures exchanges, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the appointment. Cuomo has advised OKX on policy matters since 2022, including the exchange's response to a federal investigation that ended in a $504 million settlement with the Department of Justice in February 2025. OKX pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

The Venture

The joint venture was first announced in March alongside ICE's $25 billion-valuation strategic investment in OKX. Its remit is bringing OKX's and ICE's markets together for US-based customers. ICE will license OKX's spot crypto prices to launch US-regulated crypto futures, and OKX will route its more than 120 million account holders to ICE's futures contracts and the New York Stock Exchange's planned tokenized-equities market, subject to regulatory approval.

The structure makes the joint venture the connective tissue for that two-way flow rather than a standalone product line. ICE chair and chief executive Jeffrey Sprecher described it in March as a way to "expand global retail access to ICE's pre-eminent regulated markets and accelerate our plans to offer on-chain infrastructure and tokenized assets to U.S. investors." The first product launched under the relationship was a never-expiring oil futures contract that OKX began offering in May.

Cuomo's Crypto Track

The OKX co-chair role arrives roughly a year after Cuomo's defeat in the 2025 New York City mayoral race, where he lost the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani and went on to lose the general election as an independent. The mayoral campaign ran on a notably crypto-friendly platform for a former state executive, and his advisory work for OKX through the DOJ settlement gave him a longer track in the sector than is typical for a returning politician.

His selection as co-chair pairs that policy track with Bland, an exchange-operations veteran who oversees ICE's commodity, financial and crypto futures markets, an arrangement that splits the venture's external-facing and operational duties along familiar lines.

ICE's Crypto Footprint

ICE has been steadily building crypto exposure across multiple fronts. The Polymarket investment of roughly $2 billion over two tranches values that prediction-market venue near $9 billion. Sprecher in May compared Hyperliquid's growth trajectory to early Nasdaq and disclosed multiple meetings with the decentralized exchange's team. ICE also took part in Circle's $222 million Arc presale alongside BlackRock and Apollo last month.

That portfolio sits against ICE's earlier Bakkt-era foray into bitcoin custody and futures, which Sprecher spun off in 2021. The current posture treats crypto as infrastructure rather than a separate venture line, with the OKX joint venture positioned as the consumer-facing wedge. ICE has not disclosed the venture's product roadmap beyond the futures and tokenized-equities pieces named at announcement.