Nine Companies Including Broadcom, Verizon and UnitedHealth Object to OKXICE Tokenizing Their Shares

Since the SEC issued its tokenized-stock exemption on Sept. 17, the OKXICE venture has gone from an Oct. 4 proposal to trade 63 U.S. stocks onchain to a public list of companies telling it no. The latest count, in an Oct. 15 notice, is nine.

The objectors are Cerebras Systems, AppLovin, Applied Digital, Rocket Lab, CoreWeave, Applied Optoelectronics, Verizon Communications, Broadcom and UnitedHealth Group.

OKXICE is a 50-50 joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange.

How the list grew

The objections piled up across successive public notices. Cerebras appeared in the Oct. 4 notice. AppLovin, Applied Digital and Rocket Lab were added in an Oct. 8 revision. CoreWeave, Verizon, Applied Optoelectronics, Broadcom and UnitedHealth showed up by Oct. 15.

The filings do not say when each company delivered its objection. Eight of the nine were on the original list of 63 securities. Cerebras was recorded as an objecting issuer outside that initial lineup.

What the SEC order lets issuers do

Under the Sept. 17 order, a venue must give an issuer written notice before offering third-party tokenized versions of its stock. It then has to wait at least 30 calendar days from the issuer's receipt before trading.

An objection inside that window keeps the specific stock off the venue that sent the notice. It does not bar tokenized shares of that company on other platforms. The framework is temporary and the SEC can revise it.

The practical effect is that every batch of listings is now a negotiation with the companies themselves.

What OKXICE plans to run

The venture intends to offer 24/7 permissioned trading through Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX's X Layer blockchain. It would not use a conventional order book. Traders would swap tokenized shares against stablecoins such as USDC, USDT and USDG. Participants would need identity verification and an approved digital wallet.

Under the structure OKXICE has described, an independent third party holds the actual shares through a registered broker-dealer. Each token represents an entitlement to one underlying share, including dividend and voting rights.

The platform is not live. OKXICE has not announced a launch date. It still faces the 30-day waiting period after notice goes out to issuers.

The venture says it will move ahead with dozens of other stocks, including tokenized versions of Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft.

Why the companies objected

The Oct. 15 notice records the objections but does not explain them. It also does not show that any of the nine oppose tokenization in general. No joint statement from the group exists.

Barron's reported that the objections followed concerns about stock prices, market liquidity and investor understanding of tokenized shares. It said Applied Optoelectronics raised questions about price volatility and whether investors might wrongly believe the company backed the tokens.

The broader market-structure objection comes from Nasdaq, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a regulatory filing. Nasdaq opted its own shares out of the framework. It said they should not trade on a venue that lacks real-time best prices and consolidated tape reporting, and warned that such trading could drift from the broader market in pricing and transparency. Citadel Securities raised similar concerns in a letter to the SEC, the Journal reported.

Nasdaq is not a neutral party. It is building its own tokenization platform.

The price-divergence worry is a concrete one. Tokenized shares can trade away from the underlying stock's price, especially outside regular hours and in thin liquidity. That risk is the reason a consolidated tape matters to the exchanges objecting.

OKXICE's design answers part of this. The tokens are meant to be backed one-for-one by real shares held by a registered broker-dealer, and access is permissioned. The notice does not say whether any of the nine objectors found that answer sufficient.

What comes next

The objection rate looks significant on a first batch. Crypto Briefing put the pushback at roughly 14% of the stocks OKXICE first planned to offer, and the count rose from one to nine in under two weeks. Most of the 63 companies on the initial list did not object within the window.

The list may not be final. The notices show it grew with each revision, and the 30-day windows for later-notified issuers have not all closed. The open questions are when OKXICE's waiting period clears, whether more issuers object before then, and whether the SEC adjusts the exemption now that the opt-out right is being used.