Key facts
- Of 62 companies OKXICE initially proposed to tokenize, 43, or about 69%, had objected, per a CoinDesk tally.
- Under the SEC's Innovation Exemption, a company has 30 days to object in writing, and silence counts as consent.
- OKXICE is a 50-50 joint venture between Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the NYSE, and OKX's US holding company.
- OKXICE co-chair Andrew Cuomo called the objections a natural response to a fundamentally different market structure.
- Nasdaq declined to comment on a claim that its representative urged a listed company to object to the OKXICE listing.
- Apple, Tesla and Amazon had not appeared on the objector list, the report said.
Fifty public companies had objected to having their shares tokenized on OKXICE by October 30, when the venue's first 30-day notice window closed. The venue's October 30 notice added 12 objectors, including Nvidia, Costco, Nike, Micron and Reddit, to a list that stood at 38 on October 28 and at nine when the first objectors appeared on October 15.
The other new objectors were CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Corning, Bloom Energy, IREN and USA Rare Earth. They joined 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%, had objected, according to a CoinDesk tally.
The objections stem from the SEC's five-year Innovation Exemption, issued September 17, which lets tokenized securities venues trade blockchain versions of US 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.
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 tokenized securities venues are not the best path to tokenization, arguing that venues outside the National Market System could fragment liquidity and lack real-time best-price display and consolidated-tape reporting. Nasdaq 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.