March 5 (Reuters) - OKX, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, was valued at $25 billion after it received a minority investment from Intercontinental Exchange ( ICE ), the NYSE parent said on Thursday.

The investment, which values OKX well above recent market entrants Bullish and Gemini, underscores how major Wall Street institutions are racing to develop digital-asset infrastructure as crypto evolves into a key segment of mainstream finance.

Some details about the strategic tie-up:

* ICE will license OKX's spot crypto prices and launchU.S.-regulated futures contracts. * OKX will become a distributor of ICE's U.S. futures andtokenized equities markets to more than 120 million peopleglobally. * The investment follows ICE's recent stake in Polymarket,the world's largest prediction market. * Analysts say the crypto industry may have reached aninflection point that could mark the end of the bear marketafter U.S. President Donald Trump signaled support for theClarity Act bill on Tuesday. * "There was a time window to get Clarity done. It's lookingmore and more challenging as time goes by and we get closer tomidterms. Maybe we should have accepted the market structurebill and then pushed amendments later on," OKX Global ManagingPartner Haider Rafique told Reuters. * OKX rival Kraken's banking unit became the first U.S.digital-asset bank to gain access to the Federal Reserve'spayments system through a limited-purpose ​account on Wednesday,marking a major win for an industry that has for years soughtaccess to the Fed's trillions of dollars of payment rails. * "I think it's very likely we will go in that direction inthe future, and I hope it doesn't take us six years to do it,"Rafique said. * ICE, which was also an early investor in Coinbase, willget a seat on OKX board. The terms of the investment were notdisclosed.