Nine U.S.-listed companies formally objected to tokenized versions of their shares on OKXICE, according to an Oct. 15 public notice, creating a direct obstacle to the joint venture's 24/7 trading plans.
Broadcom, Coreweave, Verizon and UnitedHealth are among the nine firms listed in the notice. The objections target OKXICE, a partnership between cryptocurrency exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.
OKXICE planned to enable investors to trade digital versions of U.S. stocks 24 hours a day, seven days a week—moving beyond the conventional restricted hours of traditional stock markets. Under the proposed arrangement, an independent third party would hold actual company shares through a registered broker-dealer, with each digital token representing an entitlement to one underlying share, including dividend and voting rights.
The Securities and Exchange Commission temporary exemption for OKXICE includes an issuer objection mechanism that allows companies to block an unaffiliated third party from tokenizing their shares. The Oct. 15 notice does not specify the reasons behind the nine objections, nor does it establish that the companies oppose tokenization generally.
These formal objections have immediate teeth: they practically prevent the objected securities from entering OKXICE's trading pools, directly impacting the venture's planned offerings.
OKXICE outlined its trading model in early October using permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX's X Layer blockchain, moving away from a conventional stock exchange order book. Investors would trade tokenized shares against stablecoins such as USDC, USDT and USDG, with platform participation requiring identity verification and an approved digital wallet.
The venture operates under temporary SEC exemptive relief rather than conventional exchange registration. The dispute highlights a core tension for blockchain ambitions in traditional finance: while technology can facilitate 24/7 trading and regulators can establish pathways, the underlying companies still retain the power to object to how their shares are handled on new platforms.
