Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, alongside OKX, will launch their tokenized equity platform on November 23, the businesses revealed on Wednesday. The platform will debut with more than 70 assets utilizing a temporary SEC exemption, despite receiving objections from 67 corporations including Apple, Meta, and Tesla.
The announcement from OKX indicated that over 70 instruments are lined up for listing, featuring equities from Better.com, BitGo, Circle, Coinbase, Robinhood, Securitize, and Strategy (MSTR), alongside 59 exchange-traded funds managed by Direxion. Strategy will additionally bring its preferred shares, such as STRC, to the marketplace.
Participation at launch is restricted to eligible U.S. clients of OKX Inc. who possess an active CeDeFi Wallet, have cleared identity verification, and finished onboarding with OKXICE, the joint venture equally shared by ICE and OKC USA Holding Inc., an OKX subsidiary. Markets will operate continuously around the clock directly within the OKX application.
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who co-leads OKXICE alongside Trabue Bland, stated that the future of finance exists onchain and that America has the chance to construct this ecosystem locally adhering to the standards, protections, and vision investors anticipate.
The organizations did not disclose the precise count of assets that will be tradable on day one or the initial liquidity available in the pools. The platform functions neither as a registered exchange nor as a broker-dealer, and it lacks approval from the SEC, the press release noted.
How the venue will work
Transactions will execute through automated market maker pools engineered on Uniswap v4 and hosted on X Layer, the layer-2 Ethereum network managed by OKX. Only authorized wallets retain the ability to trade or contribute liquidity.
Securitize is supplying the underlying tokenization architecture. Each token mirrors a security entitlement backed on a one-to-one ratio by a genuine U.S. share secured through a registered broker-dealer. Holders retain standard shareholder privileges, which encompass voting rights, dividends, and corporate actions, as detailed by the platform in a mandatory November 5 public notice associated with the exemption.
Users will maintain custody of the tokens inside their personal digital wallets. OKXICE will not store the physical assets or manage private keys. Tokens will trade paired against payment stablecoins like USDC and USDG. Furthermore, the marketplace does not maintain an order book, refrain from extending credit, and abstains from conducting primary token offerings, according to the notice.
67 companies have already opted out
That same November 5 disclosure enumerates 67 issuers that submitted formal written rejections by that deadline, counting giants like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Nike, Costco, and Home Depot among them. This registry has expanded from an earlier count of 50 objectors registered on October 30.
These rejections arise from the five-year Innovation Exemption enacted by the SEC on September 17. This framework permits tokenized security exchanges to trade blockchain representations of U.S. equities via automated market makers without formal exchange registration. Whenever an independent third party tokenizes a company’s equity, the marketplace must alert the issuer, giving them a 30-day window to file a written objection.
The regulatory body’s innovation exemption portal records OKXICE TSV as having filed its intent notice on October 4.
The enterprises choosing to participate are largely affiliated with the crypto sector. Strategy, recognized as the largest publicly traded corporate holder of bitcoin, is registering both its common equity and preferred shares. Phong Le, the president and CEO of Strategy, remarked in the statement that tokenization on the OKXICE TSV represents a logical progression toward making digital credit globally accessible 24/7, while characterizing bitcoin as digital capital.
The impending trial is whether a platform missing Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, and the majority of premier American corporations can still attract adequate transaction volume upon its rollout in 12 days, and whether additional issuers will voice objections beforehand.
For background context, a tokenized equity functions as a blockchain token backed directly by an underlying share. Under the terms of the SEC Innovation Exemption, platforms may list these instruments without direct authorization from the issuing entity unless that company formally protests within 30 days.
Originally published at https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/ice-okx-nov-23-tokenized-stock-launch.
