• OKX and ICE have partnered to launch perpetual oil futures based on Brent and WTI benchmarks.
• The new contracts will allow continuous trading without expiration or physical delivery of oil.
• OKX plans to offer the products to its 120 million users in licensed jurisdictions.
• ICE will supply pricing data to support accurate and trusted oil market benchmarks.
• The initiative builds on a broader partnership focused on blockchain and tokenized trading systems.

Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) and OKX announced a partnership to launch perpetual oil futures contracts. The products will use ICE’s Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate benchmarks. OKX said the offering will expand access to energy markets for its 120 million users.

The new contracts will not expire, allowing continuous trading without physical delivery. Both firms said the move connects traditional commodity markets with crypto-based trading systems. The rollout will target regions where OKX already offers regulated perpetual futures.

OKX to Expand Perpetual Futures With ICE Oil Benchmarks

ICE will provide pricing data for Brent crude and WTI to support the new contracts. These benchmarks are widely used in global oil markets.

Trabue Bland, senior vice president at ICE, said the products will broaden access to energy benchmarks. He stated the contracts will reach OKX’s large retail trading base.

OKX confirmed the contracts will be available only in licensed jurisdictions. The exchange said compliance remains a key requirement for the rollout.

Haider Rafique, global managing partner at OKX, said oil markets are critical to the global economy. He added that integrating ICE benchmarks meets demand from market participants.

Perpetual futures allow traders to speculate on price movements without expiry dates. Traders do not need to handle physical oil or renew contracts.

Crypto and Traditional Finance Converge in OKX Deal

ICE and OKX signed a prior agreement in March to develop blockchain-based trading systems. The partnership includes tokenized securities and crypto-linked futures products.

ICE also made a strategic investment in OKX, valuing the company at $25 billion. The firms aim to expand access between traditional finance and crypto platforms.

The move follows growing interest in perpetual futures tied to commodities. Hyperliquid recently reported $1.6 billion in daily trading volume for similar oil contracts.

Open interest in Hyperliquid’s oil products exceeded $1.3 billion, showing strong demand. These contracts also operate without expiration dates.

Regulators in the United States have started reviewing perpetual futures markets. Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said oversight will increase.

Most perpetual futures currently trade on offshore crypto exchanges. These platforms often operate under different rules than traditional exchanges like ICE and CME Group.

ICE and OKX said the new oil contracts will follow regulatory frameworks in approved markets. The companies confirmed availability will depend on local licensing conditions.

The announcement marks the latest collaboration between crypto and traditional finance firms. Both companies continue developing infrastructure linking blockchain and established markets.

The firms did not disclose a specific launch date for the contracts. They confirmed deployment will begin in regions where OKX already offers perpetual futures.

Kalshi and Polymarket lost bids to block gambling cases in Nevada and Washington.

A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel denied emergency motions from both Kalshi and Polymarket to block lower court rulings, sending gambling enforcement cases in Nevada and Washington back to state courts. The orders came down on Thursday.

The judges concluded that raising a defense under the Commodity Exchange Act does not create federal jurisdiction that would move the cases out of state courts. “The CEA preemption defense is an affirmative defense, which cannot by itself give rise to federal question jurisdiction,” the panel wrote.

Why this matters for prediction market regulation

The court also rejected Polymarket’s argument that it was operating under federal direction through its compliance with CFTC oversight requirements. “Polymarket’s actions merely demonstrate its own compliance with federal law, which cannot alone show that it is acting under a federal officer,” the judges stated.

Nevada’s cases center on both platforms’ lack of state gaming licenses. Washington’s lawsuit focuses on whether Kalshi offers illegal gambling products through its sports event contracts.

Key Takeaways

• Bloomberg reports Uber is considering a complete acquisition of Delivery Hero, a major European food delivery player
• Uber disclosed earlier this week it owns a 19.5% stake in Delivery Hero, with an additional 5.6% through options
• Investment bank Morgan Stanley assisted Uber in rapidly accumulating its position through derivative instruments
• Uber shares declined approximately 1.9% following the announcement; rival DoorDash climbed 1.9%
• Delivery Hero’s stock has surged almost 110% in Frankfurt during the last half-year, reaching a market capitalization of approximately €10.2 billion

According to a Friday Bloomberg report, Uber has entered preliminary discussions regarding a potential full acquisition of Delivery Hero, the Frankfurt-traded food delivery powerhouse.

The strategic initiative is designed to strengthen Uber’s competitive position against DoorDash in markets beyond American borders.

Following the report’s release, Uber’s stock price fell roughly 1.9%. Meanwhile, DoorDash—considered a primary competitor in global delivery markets—saw its shares rise 1.9% on the same information.

Uber Technologies, Inc., UBER

Just days ago, Uber revealed it had swiftly accumulated a 19.5% ownership position in Delivery Hero, complemented by options representing another 5.6%. The stake was built with assistance from Morgan Stanley, which leveraged derivative products to facilitate rapid execution.

Bloomberg’s sources indicate that Uber has been engaging in conversations with additional Delivery Hero shareholders regarding its potential acquisition interest.

Uber’s Official Position

In an official submission to German financial regulators, Uber declared it presently has no plans to increase its ownership to 30% or beyond—a key threshold that would normally require a mandatory takeover bid under European regulatory frameworks.

Nevertheless, the company acknowledged that it regularly evaluates its investment portfolio and remains open to acquiring additional shares should favorable circumstances emerge.

Uber further clarified it has no intentions to modify Delivery Hero’s capital framework or seek to influence board member selections beyond exercising standard shareholder voting privileges.

The company may still require regulatory clearance from antitrust authorities before exceeding specific ownership levels across European jurisdictions.

Delivery Hero’s Current Position

Delivery Hero’s stock has surged approximately 110% on the Frankfurt exchange during the previous six-month period, bringing its total market capitalization to around €10.2 billion.

The organization provides food and grocery delivery operations throughout numerous international markets excluding the United States, positioning it as a valuable strategic acquisition target for any platform seeking international expansion.

With support from financial advisory firms, Uber is carefully evaluating various approaches to expand its ownership stake, according to Bloomberg’s reporting.

Discussions remain in progress, though sources emphasized that no guarantee exists that negotiations will culminate in a completed transaction.

THORChain said a malicious node operator exploited a vulnerability in its GG20 threshold signature system to drain about $10.7 million from one of the protocol’s vaults.

The GG20 threshold signature scheme is used to secure THORChain vaults by splitting key control across multiple node operators, meaning no single node normally holds the full private key.

The vulnerability allowed the malicious node operator to reconstruct a full private key for one vault, through “progressive key material leakage,” the protocol said in a post-mortem report released on Wednesday.

THORChain said its automatic solvency checks triggered within minutes and halted signing and trading across multiple chains without human intervention. Node operators subsequently coordinated via Discord for a full network halt within two hours after and deployed a patch to fix the vulnerability.

The post-mortem report shows that the protocol’s automatic solvency checks functioned and stopped the exploiter from draining more funds. The report comes a week after blockchain investigator ZachXBT first flagged the $10 million exploit, shortly before THORChain announced a halt to all trading and signing.

The incident adds to a resurgence in crypto exploits, which stole more than $634 million in April, according to DefiLlama data.

Timeline of the $10 million THORChain exploit. Source: THORChain

THORChain weighs recovery path without RUNE sales

THORChain said Friday that the post-exploit recovery path will be determined by a community consensus and published governance proposal ADR-028, with votes currently open for node operators.

The proposal would have THORChain absorb losses first through protocol-owned liquidity and spread the remainder across synth holders. It would deplete protocol-owned liquidity but redirect a portion of protocol income to replenish it over time, without minting or selling THORChain (RUNE) tokens.

ADR-028 community proposal for recovery after $10 million exploit. Source: Gitlab

THORChain also offered a recovery bounty for the return of the stolen funds and said it would slash the attacker’s malicious node while protecting innocent nodes that were placed in the same vault as the exploiter.

Related: Polymarket team says user funds safe as exploit losses climb above $600K

ADR-028 proposes keeping the existing GG20 TSS framework in a patched and upgraded version and said it will resume trading only after the vulnerability is fixed, drawing mixed reactions from crypto industry watchers.

Pseudonymous crypto project analyst Bird said the initial vulnerability suggests that the GG20 TSS signing stack has a “flaw in randomness generation or local signing isolation,” but praised THORChain’s auto-safeguard for limiting the damage done by the exploit.

Other industry watchers were more critical of the decision. “My mental model is that GG20 has many brittle assumptions. You can keep patching it, but it will forever be a bit of a black box,” wrote crypto investor JP in a Wednesday X post.

RUNE/USD, 1-week chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

The RUNE token’s price fell 15.5% in the week following the exploit, but staged a 4% recovery in the 24 hours leading up to 11:00 a.m. UTC on Friday, CoinMarketCap data shows.

Magazine: The legal battle over who can claim DeFi’s stolen millions 

Gold fell below $4,500 per ounce on Friday as both spot prices and New York futures dropped about 0.94 percent, extending a sharp pullback from this year’s record highs.

Early on May 22, gold slipped below $4,500 as spot and New York futures fell 0.94 percent, after the metal broke a key psychological level during New York trading.

Why did gold fall below $4,500 today?

In a widely cited follow up post, market watcher OnChainHutan said gold “slipped below $4,500, closing around $4,497.29 – $4,535.60 depending on the contract,” adding that the drop came as the US dollar hovered near a six week high and oil pushed above $97 per barrel.

That combination reinforced a familiar macro squeeze for bullion, since a stronger dollar makes gold more expensive for buyers in other currencies while higher energy costs fan inflation fears and push traders to price in the risk of tighter policy rather than imminent cuts.

According to OnChainHutan, futures markets are now “fueling bets the Fed may hike rates later this year,” with markets “pricing in a roughly 58 percent chance” of another move, a shift that directly undermines the appeal of a non yielding asset that earlier soared on expectations of aggressive easing.

The pullback lands just months after gold repeatedly punched through records above $4,900 per ounce, driven by central bank buying, geopolitical stress and wagers that Federal Reserve chair would have to slash borrowing costs into a slowing US economy.

In April, analysts surveyed by Investing.com still projected a median 2026 gold price of about $4,916 per ounce, underscoring how far sentiment has swung in a matter of sessions as spot now tests the lower edge of a $4,300 to $4,700 trading corridor highlighted in prior rate cut driven rallies.

What does the gold slide signal for risk assets and crypto?

Reactions on X captured the emotional whiplash, with one user noting that “gold drops 1 percent and suddenly everyone becomes a long term investor again,” while another user quipped that a “tiny red candle creates more panic than ten green ones create excitement.”

OnChainHutan argued that “gold pulling back while risk assets stay strong says a lot about current market sentiment,” pointing to an environment where equities and high beta plays have held up despite renewed Iran war risks, a dynamic also visible in recent crypto market outlook coverage of how traders fade geopolitical headlines.

Earlier this month, gold briefly fell back toward $4,500 per ounce on “heightened inflation fears” after a three percent intraday drop wiped out two weeks of gains, a move that foreshadowed today’s breach of the same level as investors reassessed whether bullion had outrun its macro narrative.

Analysts have warned that if the Fed leans more hawkish into the summer, bullion could spend extended time below $4,500 before any renewed push toward the $4,700 to $5,000 band that technical strategists previously mapped out once prices cleared $4,300 and $4,400.

For crypto traders, the move matters because this year’s record breaking gold surge above $4,900 per ounce ran alongside a powerful rally in Bitcoinm (BTC), as both assets traded like alternative macro hedges on US policy risk and Middle East tension.

If the market now believes the Federal Reserve is more likely to hike than cut, that same macro repricing could pressure high flying digital assets, just as it has started to bleed some air from bullion’s record run, something earlier crypto market outlook and ceasefire reports have highlighted whenever rate expectations flip.