The discussion came from a roundtable at OKX NOW’s “The Future Is Now” global product and ecosystem conference. It was moderated by Louis Tam, OKX’s vice president of strategic markets, and featured former New York governor and OKX Global Board member Andrew Cuomo, OKX Singapore and Australia CEO Gracie Lin, OKX Brazil CEO Guilherme Saccomani, and OKX Western Europe General Manager Roy van Krimpen.
The panel centered on a shared question: as crypto and traditional finance move closer together, what does global expansion actually require? Across the US, Singapore, Brazil, and Europe, the speakers kept returning to the same point. A global platform cannot simply copy one product stack into every market. Regulation, payments, KYC, user habits, and trust all change from place to place.
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Why Cuomo said finance was always going to adopt new technology
Louis Tam opened by asking Andrew Cuomo why he entered crypto and why he chose to work with OKX.
Cuomo said he had been paying attention to crypto since around 2011. At the time, he was serving as governor of New York and wanted the state to maintain its position as a global financial center. In his view, it was already clear then that financial markets were lagging in their use of technology. He pointed to long-standing conventions such as banks closing at 5 p.m. and stock markets not operating around the clock, arguing that many of those rules were products of older technical constraints rather than permanent features of finance.
Once new technology appears, he said, a transition in finance becomes unavoidable. The financial center that completes that transition first gains an advantage. Cuomo noted that New York established a relatively complete crypto regulatory framework in 2014, while the US federal government still has not produced an equally complete framework.
On why he joined OKX, Cuomo said leadership was the deciding factor. Whether in government, healthcare, or private enterprise, he said, an organization ultimately depends on leadership. He had previous contact with Star and came away believing that Star was technically capable and placed real weight on integrity. For Cuomo, trust is one of the central issues if the industry wants to reach a broader public. Users need to trust the product, and they also need to trust the company behind it. On that basis, he said he decided to work with OKX about five years ago and has remained involved in the company’s development.
OKX and ICE as a sign that rivalry is giving way to cooperation
Tam then turned to OKX’s cooperation with Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE. He noted that the two sides recently announced that they had notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, of plans to launch a tokenized securities trading platform under the agency’s innovation exemption framework.
Cuomo said the cooperation is highly significant and could prove to be a turning point. For a long time, he said, the conversation framed traditional finance and crypto fintech as competitors. What is changing now is that the two sides are beginning to come together in a practical way. ICE is a major institution in traditional finance and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. OKX comes from the crypto fintech side.
He said that about three months earlier, the team had proposed tokenizing US securities, a goal many people considered too aggressive because the US securities market sits at the center of the country’s financial system. Three months later, the SEC introduced what Cuomo called an innovation exemption mechanism that allows securities tokenization under certain conditions. He said OKX was among the earliest companies to announce participation. Under the current arrangement, the number of listed stocks and trading volumes would be subject to limits, but he still described it as an important step.
For Cuomo, the message is clear: traditional finance and crypto are no longer only in competition. They are beginning to cooperate and merge.
Tokenized securities and a 24/7 stock market
Cuomo said the market is moving toward a stock market that runs 24/7. In theory, he said, anyone with a smartphone could enter markets that previously required access through traditional financial infrastructure and trade stocks they already know. He described that as a democratization of economic opportunity.
Tam added that eligible OKX users can already trade oil perpetual contracts referencing ICE Brent crude and WTI benchmarks. As the cooperation develops, stocks and commodities could gradually appear on the same trading platform.
Cuomo agreed and said that would bring in a very different set of users. They may not come to trade crypto at all. They may simply want exposure to large, familiar US-listed companies. He also said that once traditional financial infrastructure enters the picture, the broader industry gains stability, credibility, and market recognition.
Brazil: commodities, cross-border costs, and a different regulatory conversation
Tam asked what this kind of cooperation could mean from the perspective of Brazilian users.
Saccomani said Brazil is one of the world’s largest exporters of beans and holds an important position in exports of coffee, iron ore, and beef. Commodities are not an abstract financial concept in Brazil, he said. They are a core part of the economy.
Yet getting commodity exposure is not straightforward for Brazilian traders or people working in related industries. One route is to trade in the local market, but that comes with local trading-hour limits, potentially thinner liquidity, and wider spreads. Another is to open accounts abroad, where liquidity may be better, but that introduces taxes and other costs tied to cross-border financial transactions.
In that context, he said, tokenizing those assets through a structure like the OKX-ICE cooperation and making them available for 24/7 trading could give users a way to gain exposure without relying entirely on the traditional offshore-account model.
He also said ICE’s involvement changes the regulatory discussion. Brazilian securities regulators have long paid attention to what benchmarks are used to price crypto derivatives. Because ICE is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and a major provider of infrastructure in mature financial markets, its participation could move that discussion into a new phase.
Singapore: digital assets need to offer value that traditional finance still does not
Tam contrasted Brazil with Singapore, where the traditional financial system is already highly developed and users have many financial products to choose from. In that setting, what new value can digital assets still provide?
Lin said Singapore is one of the most banked markets in the world. A few years ago, around 98% of adults already had access to banking services. That means any digital-asset product aimed at Singapore users has to show that it offers something traditional finance still has not fully delivered.
Traditional finance has solved many problems over the past few decades, she said, but users still have new demands. One example is 24/7 trading. That is only one opportunity among many, but it is a clear one.
She also stressed that innovation on its own is not enough. The user experience has to be simple. If a user already has access to strong financial services and moving to a new platform requires a high learning cost and a difficult migration, there is little reason to switch.
That is why the team focuses heavily on reducing friction. If opening an account can feel as simple as opening a bank account, and if payments and transfers can feel as straightforward as using a bank or payments app, the cost of changing behavior drops sharply. In a market like Singapore, where high-quality financial services are already widely available, that matters even more.
Why a license does not automatically create trust in Europe
Tam then asked what really makes European users trust a global trading platform, beyond compliance with frameworks such as Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA, and MiFID II for financial instruments.
Van Krimpen said many institutions and users assume trust begins with a license and a regulatory framework, but in practice it starts earlier. Blockchain technology itself was originally built to address trust by allowing users to verify rather than rely entirely on an intermediary. Exchanges need to provide tools that let users verify trust in a similar way.
He cited proof of reserves as one example, saying it allows users to check whether a platform actually holds the assets it says it holds. Stable and transparent delivery of products and services over time is another part of building trust.
He added that regulation does create another layer of protection. MiCA includes requirements around safeguarding client assets, while MiFID and related rules include capital requirements and consumer protections. Those frameworks help build trust, but a license does not automatically win it. A license is the starting point for competing in the market. After that, trust still has to be earned every day through stable and transparent products and services.
US regulatory uncertainty and the failure of the CLARITY Act
Tam also asked about the US regulatory environment after the CLARITY Act failed to clear a procedural vote in the Senate, and what the midterm elections could mean.
Cuomo said the current US situation is disappointing. New York had a relatively complete framework in place in 2014, yet by 2026 the federal government still had not passed the CLARITY Act. He said the bill’s name captured the issue exactly: the industry needs clarity on what is allowed, what is not, and where the boundaries are.
As for why the bill failed, Cuomo said there were many reasons, but politics sat at the center of it. With the midterm elections approaching, different political forces were weighing who would gain politically if the bill passed.
After the bill failed, regulators began trying to fill the gap. Cuomo pointed to the SEC’s innovation exemption and said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, could also introduce more rules. The problem, he said, is that if control of Congress changes after the midterms, those regulatory actions could still face fresh political and policy uncertainty.
For companies, the hardest part is not knowing what rules they will be operating under in the future. If the framework keeps shifting, businesses naturally become more cautious about investment and long-term planning.
Technology and trust as the industry’s core test
Asked what responsibility platforms should bear as digital assets move into the mainstream, Cuomo said regulation only sets a floor. It does not automatically make users trust a platform. A company can say it is fully compliant and follows every rule, but that alone does not answer the user’s question.
He reduced the issue to two elements: technology and trust. When users see numbers on a platform, they ask whether they believe those numbers. When they press a button and move their money into the system, they ask whether they trust the system itself.
That means the real question is whether a platform is willing to stand behind its own system. Cuomo said that can show up in security measures, user education, and protection mechanisms that make clear the platform is not only claiming its system is safe but is prepared to take responsibility for that judgment.
He said this matters not only for institutions but also for ordinary users who are unfamiliar with crypto or remain uneasy because of negative headlines from the past.
Van Krimpen: regulatory clarity supports product investment
Tam asked whether MiCA’s clearer framework makes it easier for teams in Europe to commit to long-term product development.
Van Krimpen said building new financial products requires substantial resources, including engineers, product managers, and strategy teams. Those investments are expensive. If a company does not know where regulation is heading, management will struggle to commit large amounts of capital and talent to new products.
That is why he welcomed the certainty MiCA brings. Combined with MiFID for financial instruments and PSD2 in payments, MiCA fills an important gap in crypto regulation.
Ideally, he said, ordinary users should not need to think about those frameworks at all. What they should experience is a stable platform, stable products, and adequate protection. But for that to happen, companies first need regulatory certainty. Only when management believes it can operate in a market over the long term will it commit resources to building new products. In his view, clear regulation is not necessarily opposed to innovation. It can give companies more confidence to invest in the future.
What professional investors in Singapore actually expect
Tam also asked what qualified, professional, and wholesale investors in Singapore really need.
Lin said their needs are not fundamentally different from the services they have long received from traditional financial institutions. The difference is that these investors are already used to first-rate service, so their standards are higher and they are harder to satisfy.
Trust comes first, she said. They need confidence that their assets will be handled properly. Beyond that, they want trades executed according to their specific requirements, including customized terms and products that fit into their existing workflows.
Service quality also matters. If something goes wrong on a Saturday night, someone has to respond quickly and solve the problem. For professional investors, she said, these are not extra features. They are the baseline.
Stablecoins in Brazil: many users just want dollar access
When Tam asked where the biggest gap remains in Brazil, Saccomani said many global brands make the same mistake when entering the market: they copy the global product, translate the text into Portuguese, and call that localization.
What matters more, he said, is understanding the problems Brazilian users face every day. Stablecoins are already heavily traded in Brazil, but the user base is diverse. One group is institutions using them for cross-border payments. Another is crypto-native users who already use stablecoins in daily activity. A third group is ordinary Brazilian users who may worry about domestic monetary policy or want to hold and spend dollars for a trip to New York at the end of the year.
Many in that last group still buy dollars through traditional foreign-exchange channels and pay high spreads and taxes related to currency conversion. But when they first arrive at an exchange to buy stablecoins, they can be overwhelmed by the number of products and functions on offer. In reality, he said, what they want is simple: convert Brazilian reais into dollar-denominated assets and use them globally.
That is why the team connected the product to Brazil’s Pix instant payment system. Users can fund through Pix, convert the funds into stablecoins, and use them in a self-custody wallet. The key is not making users understand every crypto product. It is letting them solve a dollar-access and cross-border spending problem in a way that already feels familiar.
How localization works in Singapore: Singpass, DBS, and Standard Chartered
Tam then asked which capabilities in Singapore had to be redesigned specifically for local users, even with a large global product team behind the platform.
Lin said two areas matter most: onboarding and money movement.
After receiving a Singapore license two years ago, the team’s first priority was to make identity verification easy. To do that, it integrated Singapore’s national digital identity system, Singpass. In some cases, she said, users can complete onboarding in under two minutes.
The second area is banking rails. Lin said the company built partnerships with banks that Singapore users already know and trust, including DBS and Standard Chartered. Put together, those two pieces allow users to register and move funds onto the platform within minutes.
She said that is what local teams in global markets need to do: let users enter through identity systems, banks, and payment methods they already know, rather than forcing them to abandon existing habits.
Why Europe still needs localization under a common regulatory regime
Tam noted that the European Economic Area covers about 30 markets. Even with MiCA providing a common framework, there is clearly no single European user profile. How does the company deal with that?
Van Krimpen said MiCA does allow the European Economic Area to operate under one licensing structure, but users do not think of themselves as abstract “European users.” Dutch users think of themselves as Dutch users, Polish users as Polish users, and French users as French users. They care about local competitors, local product innovation, and local payment methods.
He gave the example of iDEAL in the Netherlands, which holds a very high share of local ecommerce payments but is not a mainstream payment method in many other European countries.
As a result, the company is distributing teams geographically and building local teams in major European markets so they can gather user feedback directly. At the product level, localization includes fiat on-ramps, KYC methods, language, customer support, and community work. A common regulatory framework solves the compliance layer, he said, but it does not erase differences in user behavior across countries.
Brazilian feedback: simpler products can matter more than more features
Tam asked whether there are needs in Brazil that a global product team could easily overlook.
Saccomani returned to the stablecoin example. He said the original product already offered ordinary Brazilian users a new way to gain dollar exposure through stablecoins, but it still lived inside the same exchange app.
Users later gave the team a direct message: they only wanted to convert money into dollar assets. They did not want to understand crypto, and they did not want to understand the rest of the exchange’s product suite.
For him, that was an important lesson. Many people using the feature did not even realize they were using a large crypto exchange. They simply treated it like a wallet and did not necessarily care that a stablecoin sat underneath. What they actually needed was a way to convert local currency into dollar assets and use them freely around the world.
He said the team is now separating that product further so it can serve a completely different user group. The lesson, in his view, is that users often do not need more features. They need simpler products. A global platform should not try to push every capability onto every user. It should understand the specific problem each user is trying to solve.
Cuomo’s closing point: the next phase is moving beyond crypto-native users
In the final question, Tam asked what OKX should keep in mind as it continues to globalize.
Cuomo said both the company and the wider industry are at a turning point. The technology is already there, and trust and regulatory relationships are gradually being built. The next real challenge is moving beyond a user base made up mainly of people already familiar with crypto and reaching a broader public.
He said he rarely uses the word “crypto” himself. For people inside the industry, the term is easy to understand. For people outside it, the word can create distance. He said he would rather describe the business as a fintech company enabled by technologies such as AI.
In his view, the industry first served an inner circle of users who understood crypto and were willing to use it. But the technology should not remain limited to that group. It should have broader practical value.
At the same time, he said, products and messaging have to differ from place to place as the industry moves into the mainstream. Europe, Brazil, and Singapore are not the same, so globalization cannot mean copying one product into every market.
Cuomo added that large parts of the global population still lack access to traditional banking services. Technologies of this kind can help them move money, send remittances to family members, and gain access to financial markets that were previously out of reach because of knowledge barriers, infrastructure limits, or other obstacles.
That is why, in his view, the next stage is about moving beyond the industry’s familiar user base and bringing products to a much wider population. Technology, trust, and market validation are gradually taking shape. The next task is expanding coverage. For companies, that means growth. More broadly, it means giving more people access to financial tools and a chance to participate in economic activity.