Fifty public companies have now objected to having their shares tokenized on OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), as the venue’s first 30-day notice window closes Tuesday.
The venue’s Oct. 30 notice added 12 objectors, including Nvidia, Costco, Nike, Micron and Reddit. They join Microsoft, Alphabet, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Broadcom, Verizon and Intel, among others. Of the 62 companies OKXICE initially proposed to tokenize, 43, or about 69%, have objected, according to a CoinDesk tally.
The list has grown fast: nine objectors on Oct. 15, 16 on Oct. 19, 38 on Oct. 28 and 50 two days later.
How the opt-out works
The objections stem from the SEC’s five-year “Innovation Exemption,” issued Sept. 17, which lets tokenized securities venues (TSVs) 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. Silence counts as consent, and the order offers no way to object after the window closes.
OKXICE plans 24/7 trading of tokens backed one-for-one by shares, paired against stablecoins such as USDC in permissioned pools on OKX’s X Layer blockchain.
The objecting companies have not given reasons. JPMorgan said it remains encouraged by tokenization but wants to be thoughtful about how its shares are represented and traded. “Given how easy the opt-out is, the list of objectors is likely to keep growing,” Olivia Vande Woude, head of tokenization at Ava Labs, said.
Nasdaq’s role
The fight has also taken on a competitive edge. An executive at a Nasdaq-listed company told Crypto in America that a Nasdaq representative urged the company to object and offered a call to explain why. Nasdaq declined to comment on the claim but reiterated that TSVs are not the best path to tokenization.
Nasdaq argues that venues outside the National Market System could fragment liquidity and lack real-time best-price display and consolidated-tape reporting. It is building its own issuer-centric Nasdaq Equity Token with Kraken, targeted for the second quarter of 2027.
A full-page Wall Street Journal ad urging CEOs to opt out, headlined “YOUR STOCK. THEIR TOKENS. YOUR PROBLEM.,” linked to Nasdaq’s FAQ via QR code. Conservative-leaning nonprofit Common Sense Leadership Fund paid for it. Nasdaq said it had no connection to the ad and never funded the group.
OKXICE co-chair and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called the objections a “natural response.”
“We are at the very beginning of the rollout of fundamentally different market structure,” he said last week.
For context, a tokenized stock is a blockchain token backed one-for-one by a real share, which a third party holds. OKXICE lets it trade around the clock against stablecoins like USDC. 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.