Nine US-listed companies, including Broadcom, CoreWeave, Verizon and UnitedHealth, have formally challenged plans to trade tokenised versions of their shares on OKXICE.
The objections create an unexpected obstacle for the venture, which aims to offer round-the-clock trading in US equities using blockchain technology.
The companies were named in a public notice issued by OKXICE on 15 October. The notice identified nine issuers that had submitted formal objections. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the development.
OKXICE is a joint venture between cryptocurrency exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. ICE and OKC USA Holding Inc. each own half of the business.
The venture intends to allow investors to trade digital versions of US shares 24 hours a day, seven days a week, rather than limiting transactions to the opening hours of traditional stock markets.
Under the proposed structure, an independent third party would hold the corresponding shares through a registered broker-dealer. Each token would represent an entitlement to one underlying share, including its associated dividend and voting rights.
However, a temporary exemption granted by the Securities and Exchange Commission includes a mechanism that allows issuers to object to the tokenisation of their shares by an unaffiliated third party.
Those objections could prevent the affected securities from being added to OKXICE’s trading pools, meaning the nine filings represent a practical challenge rather than simply a symbolic disagreement.
The notice did not give reasons for the companies’ objections. It also did not indicate that the firms opposed blockchain technology or the concept of tokenised shares more broadly.
OKXICE set out details of its proposed trading system earlier this month. Rather than using a conventional stock exchange order book, it plans to operate permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX’s X Layer blockchain.
Investors would trade the tokenised shares against stablecoins, including USDC, USDT and USDG. Users would need to complete identity verification and use an approved digital wallet to participate.
The platform is operating under temporary SEC exemptive relief, rather than through conventional exchange registration.
The dispute highlights a limitation facing attempts to bring traditional equities on to blockchain networks. Technology and regulatory arrangements may enable shares to be traded continuously, but the companies whose shares are represented can still object to the structure.
For OKXICE, the formal notices therefore threaten to narrow the range of stocks available when it seeks to develop its proposed 24-hour market.
