OKX debuts a platform that turns 50 currencies into digital dollars, betting emerging market investors want stablecoins

OKX is trying to be more than a place to trade crypto. On Tuesday, the exchange launched OKX Money, a standalone app that turns more than 50 local currencies into U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins. The pitch is blunt: if you live where banking is slow, expensive, or unreliable, holding digital dollars may feel less like speculation and more like self-defense.

The app went live at OKX’s Now Product event in Singapore and is being aimed at Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Haider Rafique, OKX’s global managing partner, says the real problem is settlement. A small business shouldn’t wait days for a bank transfer to clear, he argues, and a traveler shouldn’t have a credit limit tied up by a hotel deposit. He frames the product as a fix for basic money movement, not a crypto toy.

OKX Money will let customers hold three dollar-backed stablecoins: Paxos’s USDG, Circle’s USDC, and Tether’s USDT. The company says eligible USDG balances can earn up to 10% annual yield. It also says the app includes virtual and physical cards with no foreign-exchange markup, plus referral rewards.

The launch sits inside a larger push. OKX recently got a boost from a March funding round with Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which valued OKX at $25 billion. On Sunday, the OKX-ICE joint venture — co-chaired by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — filed with the SEC to launch a separate platform for around-the-clock trading of more than 60 tokenized U.S. stocks. And OKX has also rolled out OKX Shield, which says it can reimburse up to $100,000 for regular users and up to $500,000 for top-tier VIP users after a third-party takeover.

That security pitch lands at a useful moment. CertiK says crypto platforms have lost an estimated $2.7 billion to hacks this year, including nearly $388 million stolen from Bitget last month through a flaw in a third-party security product. Meanwhile, stablecoins remain overwhelmingly dollar-based, with roughly 97% of global market value tied to the U.S. currency. Rafique says he’d even welcome an Asia-based rival if it were stable enough — which is a polite way of saying OKX sees the dollar stablecoin trade as too big to ignore.