FinanceShareShare this articleCopy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailOKX and ICE Launch Perpetual Oil Futures for Crypto Users
New perpetual oil futures will leverage ICE's Brent and WTI benchmarks, catering to OKX's 120 million crypto users.
By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Oliver Knight May 22, 2026, 12:48 p.m. 2 min readMake preferred on
Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher (Credit: CoinDesk archives)Key Details:
- Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which owns the New York Stock Exchange, has partnered with OKX to introduce perpetual oil futures tied to ICE's Brent and WTI prices.
- These contracts, which will be accessible in regions where OKX has licenses, will allow its approximately 120 million retail traders to engage with regulated energy benchmarks.
- This initiative highlights the increasing intersection of cryptocurrency and traditional finance, especially as regulators move towards overseeing perpetual futures in the U.S., while ICE strengthens its partnership with OKX.
Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) and OKX revealed on Friday their collaboration to launch perpetual oil futures.
According to a joint announcement, ICE's pricing for Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) will support the new perpetual contracts on the OKX platform.
Trabue Bland, ICE's senior vice president of futures exchanges, indicated that these contracts will provide OKX's 120 million retail traders with access to energy benchmark products.
The new contracts will be available on OKX, where ICE has a stake, in regions where the exchange is licensed to offer perpetual futures.
“Oil markets are vital to the global economy,” stated Haider Rafique, global managing partner at OKX. He emphasized that integrating ICE's benchmarks into regulated perpetual futures creates a significant link between traditional and digital markets, which market participants have been requesting.
The venture into oil perps occurs as Hyperliquid's perpetual oil futures have achieved remarkable success, with around $1.6 billion in daily trading volume and over $1.3 billion in open interest.
Perpetual futures, or “perps,” are derivative contracts that allow traders to speculate on asset prices like oil or bitcoin without the contracts expiring, thus eliminating the need to take physical delivery of oil or roll over contracts.
While most perpetual products are found on unregulated offshore exchanges, Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), recently announced plans to bring these under regulatory oversight.
This partnership between ICE and OKX marks a significant step in the fusion of cryptocurrency and traditional finance, as they previously signed a deal in March to develop technology, including blockchain systems, enabling ICE's clients to access crypto-based futures and allowing OKX users to trade tokenized securities on NYSE's platform. ICE's investment in OKX has valued the company at $25 billion.
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