Nine public companies block tokenized shares on OKX and ICE venue

Nine US-listed companies have objected to having their shares offered in tokenized form on OKXICE, the venue planned by crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent of the New York Stock Exchange. The objections appear in an OKXICE public notice dated Oct. 15.

The objectors are Broadcom, Verizon, UnitedHealth Group, AppLovin, Applied Digital, Rocket Lab, CoreWeave, Applied Optoelectronics and Cerebras Systems. Under the SEC framework that OKXICE plans to use, an issuer objection inside the notice window blocks that company's shares from trading on that specific venue.

The list grew across three revisions. The first notice, dated Oct. 4, named 63 stocks OKXICE intended to offer and already recorded one objection, from Cerebras, which was not on the roster. An Oct. 8 revision added AppLovin, Applied Digital and Rocket Lab. The Oct. 15 version brought in the other five, Unchained reported. Eight of the nine objectors had been on the original list.

The notice does not give reasons for the objections. Applied Optoelectronics told the Wall Street Journal it could not gauge what tokenization would do to its share price, liquidity and volatility, and saw no clear upside "to AOI or our shareholders," according to CoinDesk.

Nasdaq separately said it would opt out of having its own shares tokenized under the framework, in an FAQ on its website. A Nasdaq spokesperson told the Journal that the company does not want its shares trading on a venue that does not display best prices in real time or report to the consolidated tape, which aggregates stock-market trading data. Nasdaq is not among the nine issuers in the OKXICE notice.

The legal basis is the SEC's "Innovation Exemption," issued Sept. 17. It runs for five years and exempts qualifying venues from exchange registration, allowing them to trade tokenized US stocks through automated market makers and liquidity pools. Under the order, an issuer receives written notice before its stock can be tokenized and has at least 30 calendar days to object. A written objection means the venue cannot offer that tokenized stock, and it has five business days to update its public notice.

OKXICE plans round-the-clock trading of blockchain-based shares through permissioned Uniswap v4 pools on X Layer, the blockchain tied to OKX. Each pool would be denominated in USDC, USDG or USDT, and only wallets that pass identity and sanctions checks and hold a non-transferable token would trade. OKXICE announced the plan on Oct. 5. The notice does not set a launch date.

OKXICE is a joint venture that OKX and ICE unveiled in June, with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as co-chair, Unchained reported. Crypto Briefing reported that the venture is split evenly between the two companies.

Some market participants connected the pushback to pricing rather than to blockchain settlement. Robin Nordnes, chief executive of the trading validation platform Raiku, told Cointelegraph that issuers are objecting to not knowing what happens to their price once it trades onchain, and that a validator building a block sets the order on a public chain.

Luke Nolan, a senior research associate at CoinShares, told Cointelegraph the objection does not reject tokenization in general but targets being tokenized without consent, and that the veto appears specific to the venue. He said the concerns are valid, pointing to past attempts to use market mechanics to push short-term swings in an underlying asset's price.

TD Securities analysts led by Reid Noch wrote that conversations with dozens of issuers showed little interest in tokenizing shares outside a small group of crypto-adjacent companies, CoinDesk reported. They named the framework's reliance on temporary exemptive relief, rather than permanent rules, as its largest hurdle, because a future commission could reverse the approach.

OKXICE plans to move ahead with other names on its list, including tokenized versions of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, according to Crypto Briefing. Most of the 63 companies did not object within the window. OKXICE has not said when the venue will open or which stocks will make the final list.