Sixteen Companies Object to OKX-ICE Tokenised Stock Venue as Cuomo Calls Resistance Expected
Key points
- Sixteen companies, including Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, Caterpillar, McDonald's and Western Digital, have formally objected to tokenised trading of their shares on the OKXICE venue.
- The objection mechanism is a 30-day window built into the SEC's five-year Innovation Exemption, introduced roughly a month ago, which allows issuers to opt out of having their shares traded on qualifying tokenised securities venues.
- OKX-ICE co-chair Andrew Cuomo described the initiative as a deliberately capped sandbox, with limits on both the number of participating companies and the volume of trades permitted.
- Securitize, which announced a separate offering of 12 tokenised stocks for US investors earlier this month, clarified that issuer objections to OKXICE do not automatically extend to its own issuer-sponsored approach.
- Vertalo chief executive Dave Hendrick identified the absence of any system that normalises and synchronises trading between traditional exchanges and tokenised securities venues as an outstanding infrastructure gap.
Andrew Cuomo, co-chairman of the OKX-ICE joint venture and former New York governor, characterised the growing wave of issuer objections to tokenised stock trading as an anticipated feature of the experiment rather than a setback. Speaking on a press call, Cuomo noted the venue’s structure was built to allow companies to opt in or out, and that caution from large issuers during a period of dramatic market-structure change was by design. Sixteen companies have now formally objected to having tokenised versions of their shares traded on OKXICE, the planned venue formed by crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), parent of the New York Stock Exchange. The seven most recently disclosed objectors include Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, Caterpillar, McDonald’s and Western Digital, joining earlier objectors such as Broadcom, Verizon and UnitedHealth.
The objections arise under the US Securities and Exchange Commission‘s five-year Innovation Exemption, which was introduced roughly a month ago and provides qualifying venues with room to test around-the-clock blockchain-based equity trading through automated market makers and liquidity pools. The framework includes a 30-day objection window through which issuers can block participation of their shares, a mechanism that Vertalo chief executive Dave Hendrick described as working as intended. Cuomo framed the overall initiative as a deliberately limited sandbox, with caps on the number of participating stocks and on trading volumes.
Separately, tokenisation firm Securitize announced an offering of 12 tokenised stocks for US investors earlier this month, including Microsoft and Alphabet shares, with plans to make them available on the OKXICE venue. Securitize chief executive Carlos Domingo noted that issuer objections to OKXICE do not by themselves signal opposition to Securitize’s distinct offering, and called for an education process around pricing, investor protections, custody and shareholder rights. Hendrick pointed to a further structural gap: no system currently normalises and synchronises trading across traditional exchanges and tokenised securities venues, suggesting meaningful infrastructure work remains before the framework reaches full operational coherence.