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Haider Rafique

Global Chief Marketing Officer, OKX

Search every verified Haider Rafique interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. At a TOKEN2049 Singapore 2026 panel titled "Lando Norris × OKX: The Drive to Win," Haider Rafique, Global Managing Partner and CMO of OKX, discussed the company's branding strategy and partnership with McLaren. Rafique said that OKX had rebranded from OKCoin in February 2022 and sought large distribution platforms, which led to the Formula 1 partnership. He described Formula 1 as the only sport that offers such reach, and explained that McLaren stood out among teams due to its heritage, citing drivers from Senna to more recent figures like Coulthard, Montoya, and Mika. During the panel, Rafique also participated in a lighthearted segment where he chose Warren Buffett as his pick for a desert island companion and for a hypothetical dinner guest, while Lando Norris selected Taylor Swift. The discussion also touched on the intersection of technology, performance, and fan engagement in Formula 1, with Rafique and other speakers highlighting the importance of simple user experiences in crypto and payments.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“McLaren was interesting because we spoke with a bunch of teams at the time. Red Bull was performing really well and there was Mercedes. But McLaren, I believe as a fan and just like Lando, I used to play Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto. But McLaren, I remember growing up, McLaren having such incredible heritage starting from Senna to even the more recent drivers like David Coulthard, Montoya, Mika, all of these guy”

“So back then the company was known as OKCoin or OKX, we had like some brand fragmentation. So the reason why we did the McLaren deal or some of our other larger partnerships was we had just rebranded the company to OKX. I believe that was February of 2022. And we needed really large distribution platforms. So, we were looking at sports teams. We were looking at entertainment. And the thing that attracted us about For”

“My wish is the industry focuses less on speculation and focuses more on real-world utility. I think there's a large opportunity there. I don't think we figured it out. I think we are still in the experimentation stage, but wouldn't it be nice if you can start putting your mortgage, your house, your hard assets on chain and uh you're able to verify that you're the true owner and you can have anonymity.”

“I would argue that the fiat systems are not programmable, not as programmable as crypto, and crypto is now going to find its ultimate use case with AI. And we're building a lot of Algorand uh tools. We've released a few products over the last 2 months, and I think we're going to continue to create sandboxes for developers.”

“We're now the second largest exchange in the world, we're the second largest venue for derivatives trading in the world, and you probably saw our recent deal with ICE. Now, what most of the world doesn't know is that the way this deal came around is a simple introduction from Zak Brown to Jeff Sprecher and a few months later we have an incredible deal that benefits both these companies.”

“You can't just like take advantage of of a particular regulatory situation to do regulatory arbitrage and and then you know fool people and this is exactly what's happening now but it's not going to be durable. Our company is already 8 years old and I want it to be 16 years old and 32 years old and if if we do stupid things then we might actually die and that's not what I want for the company.”

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