Intercontinental Exchange and OKX are teaming up to list perpetual oil futures that track ICE Brent and WTI benchmarks on the crypto exchanges derivatives platform.
Summary
- ICE will license its Brent and WTI futures prices to support new perpetual oil contracts on OKX in selected markets
- The move follows ICE’s investment that valued OKX at 25 billion dollars and gave the NYSE owner a board seat
- Oil perps mirror a fast growing niche pioneered by platforms like Hyperliquid, where WTI linked perpetuals have seen volumes jump to 7.3 billion dollars
- The initiative blurs lines between traditional commodities and crypto derivatives as CME and ICE push regulators to rein in offshore oil perps while testing their own 24/7 models
The owner of the New York Stock Exchange will provide its regulated futures prices for ICE Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate as the reference curve behind the new contracts, while OKX handles the perpetual structure, crypto margin and user distribution.
The contracts will reference the same benchmarks that underlie multi trillion dollar cleared futures on ICE, according to Bloomberg, but will be listed as non expiring swaps on OKX’s venue with funding payments to keep prices aligned with the underlying oil curves.
For now the trading will be limited to jurisdictions where OKX already has permission to offer perpetual futures, which means the products are likely to launch outside the United States even as ICE markets them to institutions used to regulated commodity exposure.
That split structure allows ICE to monetise its benchmark data and deepen a 25 billion dollar strategic tie up with OKX without immediately seeking US approval for 24 hour oil perps on its own exchanges.
The deal sits on top of a broader partnership under which ICE took a minority stake in OKX, secured a board seat and agreed to license its US futures and tokenised equities markets back into the crypto exchange, which serves more than 120 million accounts.
Under that March agreement ICE plans to launch US regulated crypto futures based on OKX spot prices while OKX in turn expects to offer access to ICE’s US futures suite and New York Stock Exchange linked tokenised stocks once regulators sign off.
Will OKX and ICE’s 24/7 oil perps redraw the line between Wall Street and crypto?
Market observers see the oil perpetuals as a logical extension of that blueprint, inserting real world commodities into a crypto native leverage and funding model that retail traders already use for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) exposure on OKX’s derivatives books.
For readers tracking large cap assets, Bitcoin and Ethereum prices, liquidity conditions and derivative flows are already covered in depth on dedicated pages at crypto news, which provide context for how new products like oil perps can bleed into broader digital asset volatility and funding markets.
What does this mean for crypto and commodity regulation
The move lands in the middle of a political and regulatory fight over whether perpetual futures on US linked commodities should be allowed for American users at all, and if they are, who should host them.
CME and ICE have pushed US officials to crack down on platforms like Hyperliquid that list WTI linked perps for global users with little classical oversight, framing the issue as a question of market integrity and surveillance rather than a pure turf war.
At the same time both exchanges are nudging regulators toward a world of 24 hour trading, with ICE’s NYSE working on a tokenised securities platform funded by stablecoins and designed for round the clock access that looks very similar in structure to the crypto venues they are publicly criticising.
In that context the OKX deal reads less like a sideline experiment and more like a live test case for hybrid market structure.
ICE supplies regulated benchmarks and governance while OKX contributes the perpetual engine, user interface and experience running high leverage derivatives with up to 125 times leverage in some markets.
If regulators tolerate oil perps tied to regulated benchmarks offshore, it strengthens the case for bringing similar products onshore in a controlled way; if they clamp down, the episode will underline how far commodity regulators are willing to go to keep price discovery anchored in listed futures rather than in offshore crypto contracts.
One person familiar with the thinking told Bloomberg that a large energy trading firm put it bluntly, saying that traders “want the same benchmarks and margin offsets they already use at ICE, but with the flexibility of crypto style funding and around the clock risk management,” a view that captures the logic behind the tie up even as the regulatory path remains uncertain.
For readers looking to understand how this clash between traditional derivatives and digital assets is evolving beyond oil, detailed coverage of Bitcoin markets, Ethereum staking and the rise of perpetual futures across major coins is available on crypto news, including explainers on how funding rates, open interest and cross margining can transmit stress between commodity perps and large cap crypto contracts.
Those dynamics matter because an oil shock expressed through leveraged perps can now move through balance sheets that also hold Bitcoin or Ethereum collateral, tightening the coupling between energy and crypto in ways that macro traders and regulators will have to model rather than ignore.
“We are seeing the convergence of two infrastructures that used to live in separate universes,” said a derivatives strategist at a European prop firm who asked not to be named because they are not authorised to speak publicly. “If you clear oil futures at ICE during the day and trade perpetuals on OKX at night, that is one risk system, not two.”
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