OKXICE Tokenized Securities Venue launches 23 November with Direxion ETFs dominating roster

The OKXICE Tokenized Securities Venue, a 50-50 joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE, owner of the New York Stock Exchange), is set to open to eligible US customers on 23 November carrying more than 70 assets. It will operate under the Securities and Exchange Commission‘s (SEC) Innovation Exemption, a temporary relief instrument granted in September that permits permissioned on-chain venues to trade tokenised National Market System (NMS) stocks through automated market maker pools without registering as an exchange and outside the scope of Regulation NMS.

The asset roster differs substantially from the October filing, which had named 63 stocks. Most corporate issuers exercised their right under the exemption to object to tokenisation of their shares, leaving only six of the original names on the list: BitGo, Circle, Coinbase, Robinhood, Securitize, and Strategy, all of which operate in or adjacent to the crypto sector. Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, and Broadcom are among those that withdrew, a wave of objections that coincided with a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal encouraging issuers to do so. Better.com is the sole new corporate addition, and Strategy is also listing several preferred stocks, including STRC.

The gap left by departing equities has been filled almost entirely by 59 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from Direxion, a top-20 US ETF issuer with approximately 64 billion dollars under management according to ETF.com and known primarily for leveraged and inverse products. The specific Direxion funds included have not yet been disclosed. What is now operational is a venue whose equity exposure skews heavily crypto-adjacent and whose fund exposure leans toward amplified and short-mimicking instruments, a profile that reflects issuer reluctance as much as any deliberate design choice.