One of New York’s most prominent politicians is pivoting to digital assets. Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York and a New York City mayoral candidate in 2025, will co-chair a joint venture between the owner of the New York Stock Exchange and the crypto exchange OKX, the two companies announced on Monday.
The project will focus on taking NYSE-listed assets and tokenizing them, or putting them into blockchain wrappers, said an OKX spokesperson. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the prominent stock exchange, will also work with OKX to provide the crypto company’s users with access to tokenized futures and equities, added the spokesperson.
“You can virtually walk through the front door of the New York Stock Exchange through your smartphone, and you can do that seven days a week in a way you never could before,” Cuomo told Fortune.
The venture comes after Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced in March that it had invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation. The NYSE owner put roughly $200 million into the crypto exchange, according to Bloomberg.
Cuomo’s role appears to be the New York politician’s next act after he lost to Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election. Cuomo said he will spend the majority of his time overseeing the joint venture between ICE and OKX, while also working with a handful of nonprofits and philanthropies that he declined to name. ICE Senior Vice President Trabue Bland will co-chair the project with Cuomo.
“This blockchain has potential that we have not even realized,” said the former governor.
‘This is not about crypto’
This isn’t the first time that the New York politician has worked with OKX. In 2021, Cuomo resigned from the governor’s office after multiple women alleged that he had sexually harassed them. He has repeatedly denied those accusations.
After his resignation, Cuomo, who was once New York attorney general, began advising OKX in 2023 as it navigated an investigation from the Department of Justice. In 2025, the crypto exchange agreed to a $500 million settlement and pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws. Following the plea deal, OKX relaunched in the U.S. and has sought to ride a wave of institutionalization as Wall Street dives into digital assets amid a friendlier administration under President Donald Trump.
In an interview, the former governor, who isn’t working with other crypto companies, said he was a supporter of blockchain technology, not crypto. The terms are often used interchangeably, but many associate the latter with memecoins and the industry’s less reputable characters. (Cuomo said he “didn’t really follow” the memecoin launched by former New York Mayor Eric Adams in January.)
“This is not about crypto,” Cuomo said, referring to the joint venture he was co-chairing. “This is about blockchain and financial technology, and applying blockchain to other assets.”
The politician didn’t disclose whether he owned cryptocurrencies. “I own multiple asset classes,” he said. And he didn’t rule out a return to politics. “No plans,” he said, when asked whether he was thinking of his next political act. “But never say never.”
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