ICE and OKX Set Nov. 23 Tokenized Stock Launch After 67 Companies Opt Out

Bitcoin Magazine

ICE and OKX Set Nov. 23 Tokenized Stock Launch After 67 Companies Opt Out

OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) will open their tokenized stock venue on Nov. 23, the companies said Wednesday, offering more than 70 assets under a temporary SEC exemption even as 67 companies, including Apple, Tesla and Meta, have already objected.

The OKX announcement said more than 70 assets are expected to be listed, including securities from Better.com, BitGo, Circle, Coinbase, Robinhood, Securitize and Strategy (MSTR), as well as 59 exchange-traded funds from Direxion. Strategy will also list its preferred stocks, such as STRC.

Access at launch is limited to eligible U.S. customers of OKX Inc. who have activated a CeDeFi Wallet, passed identity checks and completed onboarding with the joint venture, which is called OKXICE and is owned equally by ICE and OKC USA Holding Inc., an OKX affiliate. Trading will run around the clock in the OKX app.

“The future of finance is onchain, and we have an opportunity to build it here in America, with the standards, safeguards and ambition that investors expect,” said former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who co-chairs OKXICE with Trabue Bland.

The companies did not say how many of the more than 70 assets will trade on the first day, or how much liquidity the pools will have at the open. The venue is not a registered exchange or broker-dealer and is not approved by the SEC, the announcement said.

Trading will run through automated market maker pools built on Uniswap v4 and deployed on X Layer, the Ethereum layer-2 network OKX operates. Only approved wallets can trade or add liquidity.

Securitize will provide the tokenization infrastructure. Each token represents a security entitlement backed one-for-one by a U.S. share held by a registered broker-dealer, and holders keep the usual shareholder rights, including dividends, voting and corporate actions, the venue said in a Nov. 5 public notice required under the exemption.

Customers will hold the tokens in their own wallets. OKXICE will not hold the assets or the private keys. The tokens will be paired with payment stablecoins such as USDC and USDG. The venue does not operate an order book, does not extend credit and does not conduct primary offerings, the notice said.

The same Nov. 5 notice lists 67 issuers that had sent a written objection by that date, among them Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Netflix, Nvidia, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Costco, Nike and Home Depot. The list has grown from 50 objectors in an Oct. 30 notice.

The objections stem from the SEC’s five-year “Innovation Exemption,” issued Sept. 17, which lets tokenized securities venues trade blockchain versions of U.S. stocks through automated market makers without registering as exchanges. When an unaffiliated third party tokenizes a company’s stock, the venue must notify the issuer, which then has 30 days to object in writing.

The SEC’s innovation exemption page lists OKXICE TSV as having submitted a notice of intent on Oct. 4.

The names the companies highlighted are mostly crypto-linked. Strategy, the largest public bitcoin treasury company, is listing both its common stock and its preferreds. “Tokenization on the OKXICE TSV is a natural next step toward making Digital Credit accessible to investors around the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Strategy’s president and chief executive, Phong Le, said in the announcement, referring to preferreds such as STRC. Le also called bitcoin “Digital Capital.”

The test now is whether a venue that has lost Apple, Tesla, Nvidia and most of the rest of the largest U.S. companies can still draw enough trading to matter when it opens in 12 days, and whether any more issuers object before then.

For context, a tokenized stock is a blockchain token backed one-for-one by a real share. Under the SEC’s Innovation Exemption, the venue can list these tokens without the issuing company’s consent, unless the company objects within 30 days.

This post ICE and OKX Set Nov. 23 Tokenized Stock Launch After 67 Companies Opt Out first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.