Tokenized Stocks: 67 U.S. Companies Block OKX and NYSE Parent ICE

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Wall Street is supposed to move onto the blockchain, but almost no one on Wall Street wants to come along: 67 publicly traded U.S. companies have barred OKXICE from trading their shares as tokens. Among them are Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and JPMorgan. OKXICE is the joint venture of the crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange. Of the 62 companies on the original list, six are left, according to CoinDesk, and all six come from the crypto corner of the market. The platform plans to launch anyway, on Nov. 23.

What OKXICE Had Planned

OKXICE is owned in equal parts by ICE and OKX’s U.S. holding company. Its co-chairman is Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York. In early October, the joint venture announced that it wanted to trade about 60 tokenized U.S. stocks around the clock, from Nvidia to Walmart to SpaceX. Trading takes place on X Layer, OKX’s blockchain, through permissioned liquidity pools and against stablecoins.

The basis is the “innovation exemption” that the Securities and Exchange Commission issued in mid-September. It lets such venues operate for five years without registering as an exchange. The tokens must carry the same rights as the stock, including dividends and voting rights. And the exemption contains a veto: If an independent third party tokenizes a stock, the venue has to notify the company in advance. The company then has 30 days to object in writing. If it does, the token may not be traded there.

That route, through an outside tokenizer, is the one OKXICE chose. The plan apparently had not been coordinated with the companies concerned.

From 9 to 67 in Three Weeks

In mid-October, OKXICE reported the first nine objections, including those from Broadcom, Verizon and Cerebras, the A.I. chip maker. By the end of October there were 50, and in early November 56. In its notice from last Thursday, the joint venture lists 67 companies. The list reads like a cross-section of the U.S. stock market:

• Big Tech: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Cisco
• Chips and A.I.: Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Broadcom, Micron, Qualcomm, Arm, Cerebras, CoreWeave, Palantir
• Finance: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, S&P Global, SoFi
• Consumer and retail: Walmart, Costco, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Home Depot
• Industry and health care: Tesla, SpaceX, Boeing, Caterpillar, GE Vernova, Eli Lilly, UnitedHealth, Moderna

The number is higher than the original list for a simple reason: Eleven companies objected even though OKXICE had not selected them at all, according to CoinDesk. Of the 62 companies originally planned, 56 have said no, or about 90 percent. That leaves Strategy, Coinbase, Circle, Robinhood, Securitize and BitGo.

Why the Companies Are Saying No

The companies do not have to give reasons for objecting, and OKXICE’s notices contain only names and ticker symbols. Reports nevertheless add up to a picture:

• Price and liquidity: Some companies fear effects on their share price, liquidity and volatility if their stock trades in parallel on a second, lightly regulated market, according to the newsletter Crypto in America. The S.E.C. itself, in its order, names possible price dislocations as a point issuers may weigh.
• Risk of confusion: Applied Optoelectronics, a maker of networking equipment, worries that investors might believe the company is behind the offering, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal cited by crypto.news.
• Waiting: Others first want to see how shareholder rights, custody and market transparency work in practice. An objection costs nothing and closes no doors: The companies can tokenize their shares elsewhere, or on their own, later.
• OKX: Some companies have raised concerns about OKX’s offshore domicile, Crypto in America reported. The exchange paid more than $500 million (about €450 million) in 2025 to settle a U.S. case.
• Nasdaq: An executive at a Nasdaq-listed company told the newsletter that the exchange had reached out and advised objecting. Nasdaq is not commenting on that, but it considers the new venues the wrong path. It is working with Payward, Kraken’s parent company, on stock tokens of its own that are expected to launch in the second quarter of 2027 and that put issuers in charge.

Then there is an advertisement in The Wall Street Journal in which a conservative-leaning organization warned chief executives about the risks of tokenization. A QR code led to a question-and-answer page from Nasdaq. The exchange denies having anything to do with it.

What Launches on Nov. 23

OKXICE is sticking to its launch. The joint venture has just confirmed Nov. 23, according to crypto.news. More than 70 assets are set, it said, including 59 E.T.F.s, though not all of them may be available on the first day. Among individual stocks, the crypto-related names like Coinbase, Circle and Robinhood remain. Eligible U.S. customers who verify their identity through OKX and use a wallet of their own will be allowed to trade.

A showcase for the biggest names on Wall Street has thus become a niche offering. The business would not have been large for now even with Apple and Nvidia, however: The S.E.C. caps trading volume in large stocks at 0.25 percent of average daily volume. OKXICE itself points out in its notice that the venue is not registered with the S.E.C. in any capacity.

The Veto: Protection or Brake?

Mr. Cuomo is striking a combative tone. The newspaper ad means “game on,” he said on a press call. Companies outside the original selection had been in touch about joining, he said. He named none.

That issuers can forbid trading of their stock on a venue is contested. In traditional U.S. stock trading, companies cannot determine which venues their shares trade on. Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of Robinhood, argued in an earlier dispute over stock tokens that issuers should have no veto. Luke Nolan of the asset manager CoinShares reads the objections as a reaction to this one venue, according to Cointelegraph. Hester Peirce, then an S.E.C. commissioner, said in September that she expected broad excitement among companies.

On the other side is SIFMA, the securities industry’s trade group, which warned when the exemption was introduced about several token versions of the same stock trading on lightly regulated markets. A statement from the S.E.C. on the wave of objections has not appeared in the coverage so far.

The Competition

A small rival shows how it works with issuers’ consent: The venue TSV LLC already traded tokenized shares under the new exemption in early November, those of Canton Strategic Holdings, with the company’s approval. The 30-day period does not apply in that model.

As the second provider after OKXICE, Perpetuals.com, the Nasdaq-listed company of the founder Patrick Gruhn, has filed notice of a venue of its own with the S.E.C. The crypto exchange Bullish wants to secure direct access to nearly 3,000 listed companies with its acquisition of the transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion (about €3.8 billion). Robinhood, Kraken and Coinbase have so far offered stock tokens mainly outside the United States. And Nasdaq wants to follow with its model in 2027.

A good deal is at stake for ICE. The company bought into OKX in March at a valuation of $25 billion (about €22.5 billion) to offer tokenized NYSE stocks to the crypto exchange’s roughly 120 million users. Many heavyweights listed on the NYSE, of all places, like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Coca-Cola, have now waved it off.

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