By Ateev Bhandari and Arasu Kannagi Basil

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 launch

U.S.-regulated futures contracts.

* OKX will become a distributor of ICE's U.S. futures and

tokenized equities markets to more than 120 million people

globally.

* The investment follows ICE's recent stake in Polymarket,

the world's largest prediction market.

* Analysts say the crypto industry may have reached an

inflection point that could mark the end of the bear market

after U.S. President Donald Trump signaled support for the

Clarity Act bill on Tuesday.

* "There was a time window to get Clarity done. It's looking

more and more challenging as time goes by and we get closer to

midterms. Maybe we should have accepted the market structure

bill and then pushed amendments later on," OKX Global Managing

Partner 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's

payments system through a limited-purpose ​account on Wednesday,

marking a major win for an industry that has for years sought

access to the Fed's trillions of dollars of payment rails.

* "I think it's very likely we will go in that direction in

the 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

, will get a seat on OKX board. The terms of the

investment were not disclosed.