Category: Business

OKX has launched more than 20 equity perpetual swap contracts, offering users across Asia, the CIS region, Latin America, and Türkiye exposure to trade major global stocks around the clock using crypto as collateral.

The launch includes the full “Magnificent 7”—Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, according to a statement shared with Decrypt.

It also covers crypto-linked firms such as Strategy, Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle, as well as technology stocks Palantir, Intel, Micron, and SanDisk, and the S&P 500 tracker SPY.

The equity perp launch is framed as the first phase of a broader rollout, with OKX planning to expand its range of equity contracts and tokenized real-world asset exposure in the coming months.

It’s OKX’s latest push into real-world assets, as crypto exchanges increasingly compete to offer traditional market exposure to retail investors who face hurdles accessing U.S. equities through conventional brokerages in many parts of the world.

All contracts are denominated in USDT and offer up to 5x leverage, allowing traders to respond to earnings releases, macroeconomic developments, and market-moving events even when traditional equity markets are closed, the statement said.

Unlike tokenized equities that represent actual shares, equity perpetual swaps are derivatives that track price movements without granting ownership, placing them closer to synthetic exposure products already offered by other exchanges.

“I think these instruments will command a good following from momentum-driven retail investors,” Peter Chung, head of research at Presto Labs, told Decrypt. “Crypto exchanges are far more accessible venues for retail investors in many jurisdictions around the world.”

“On traditional rails, these names are often beyond their reach due to various hurdles,” he added.

Asked how the product differs from those offered at rival platforms, including Binance, an OKX spokesperson told Decrypt its offering is differentiated by its “unified trading account.”

The spokesperson said the platform allows users to stake assets and use them as collateral for equity perpetual positions, with those assets continuing to generate yield while positions remain open.

A unified trading account allows users to deploy a range of crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, and staked holdings, as collateral across positions.

“This is one step towards bringing a broader range of real-world assets into our platform,” the spokesperson said when asked about the choice of perpetual swaps over tokenized equities representing actual shares.

“We will keep expanding our infrastructure to support exposure to global equities while allowing traders to use their crypto portfolios for this,” they said.

The rollout follows OKX’s high-profile tie-up with Intercontinental Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, which invested in OKX earlier this month at a $25 billion valuation. 

The deal is also expected to enable OKX users to trade tokenized stocks and derivatives listed on the NYSE starting in the second half of the year. 

OKX’s native token, OKB, is trading at $85, up 0.3% in the last day, and down 11.7% in the last 7 days, according to CoinGecko data.

Balancer Labs has decided to call it quits six months after its namesake protocol suffered a major security breach that founders say caused reputational damage and triggered a sell-off in the Balancer token.

The protocol, created to build and manage a DeFi platform for token swaps and liquidity pools, was hit by an exploit in November last year, after an attacker drained $128 million across six blockchains in just 30 minutes from Balancer V2’s Vault contract.

The “exploit created real and ongoing legal exposure,” co-founder Fernando Martinelli wrote in a statement on Monday,  adding that Balancer Labs was left without “any sources of revenue.” 

“Maintaining a corporate entity that carries the liability of past security incidents, while the protocol itself needs to move forward unburdened, is not responsible stewardship,” Martinelli added.

Balancer no longer needs a traditional company above it, and its DAO, Foundation, and service-provider structure should carry the protocol forward, with key staff set to move into a new operating arm if governance approves, he added.

The hack worked by exploiting a small pricing error in Balancer’s older V2 stable pools, where the system inconsistently rounded numbers during swap calculations, according to an analysis by blockchain security firm BlockSec.

“Beyond the immediate financial impact, the incident led to three lasting pressures: unrecovered funds, ongoing legal and operational exposure, and a significant erosion of user trust,” Brian Wong, senior audit engineer at BlockSec, told Decrypt. 

Transitioning to a DAO governance model could help “isolate legal risk, reduce fixed operational overhead, and shift governance and accountability more directly to the community,” Wong added.

“I believe Balancer still has a chance to turn things around and prove to token holders who stay that there can be product market fit and sustainability,” Martinelli said.

Balancing act

The wind-down points to both the longer-running weaknesses in Balancer’s token and governance model and the pressure the November hack put on the protocol’s ability to sustain itself, observers told Decrypt.

Balancer’s decision “exposes structural failure” that points to how it has “capitulated to a broken model where emissions faded, governance weakened, value capture stayed shallow,” Dominick John, analyst at Zeus Research, told Decrypt.

While streamlining its operations could be the right call, it comes as a “late-stage patch,” he said, adding that older DeFi models built around token rewards and incentive-driven growth are being “phased out.”

The shutdown also appears to be Balancer’s way of finding “a quick way to escape legal risks” after the November 2025 hack, Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt.

It gives Balancer a way to use the DAO transition to drop veBAL, its escrow governance model, which Yoon suggested had become part of the protocol’s broader structural problems.

The next test is whether Balancer’s smaller team can “actually fix governance,” Yoon said, by keeping governance aligned, security intact, and the treasury stable enough to carry the protocol forward, areas John said are “critical to keeping Balancer relevant.”

Crypto is inching closer to Australia’s retirement system, with one of the country’s largest super funds now actively exploring how to offer it to members.

Australian industry superannuation fund Hostplus is exploring whether to open a path into Bitcoin and other digital assets for its members, according to a Bloomberg report.

This move would put the $105 billion (A$150 billion) retirement giant among a small group of global pension funds willing to take on crypto exposure.

“As soon as one super fund breaks ranks on crypto assets, I’d say there’s a high probability the rest follow,” Jason Titman, CEO of Australian crypto exchange Swyftx, told Decrypt. “Around a quarter of Australians want their super funds to offer digital assets, and that number is likely to increase when the market is regulated.”

The fund’s CIO, Sam Sicilia, told Bloomberg the plan is focused on Choiceplus, a self-directed window that lets members manage a slice of their own retirement savings, currently about 1% of the fund’s total book. 

“There’s certainly a demand from some of our members who write in and say, ‘Why can’t I have access to cryptocurrency?’” he said.

A launch could come as early as next financial year, pending regulatory approval and internal product design work, Sicilia said. 

Hostplus, which serves nearly two million members with an average age in the mid-to-late 30s, is still reviewing consumer protections and product design.

Sicilia said the fund’s view of crypto has evolved considerably since an earlier assessment roughly a decade ago, and that the current review covers not just Bitcoin but a broader universe of digital assets, including potential tokenized exposure to areas such as music rights.

Kraken Australia managing director Jonathon Miller told Decrypt the move, if implemented, is a “positive step forward for the sector.” 

“We have come a long way in the last decade, and for many Australians, digital assets are increasingly viewed as a legitimate long-term investment; however, access to them, outside of SMSFs, has remained limited,” he said. 

“Expanding availability through platforms like Choiceplus gives investors more flexibility in how they build and diversify their portfolios,” Miller said, adding that “more choice” and “easier access” would benefit “both consumers and the broader market”.

Still, volatility remains a key barrier as AMP Super, one of the few funds to experiment with crypto, recently cut its Bitcoin futures exposure to around 0.02% after a sharp downturn wiped out roughly $700 billion from the market earlier this year. 

“We’ve had essentially no exposure during most of the recent sell-off,” AMP Super head of portfolio design Stuart Eliot told Investment Magazine last month.

The position dates back to May 2024, when AMP Super added Bitcoin futures via its dynamic allocation strategy.

On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, market sentiment leans toward upside, with users seeing a 50.7% likelihood of Bitcoin reaching $84,000 rather than falling to $55,000.

The world’s largest crypto currently sits at $70,599, up 3.6% on the day, according to CoinGecko data.