OKX and NYSE Owner ICE Plan 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading Under SEC Exemption

OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has notified the SEC that it plans to launch a round-the-clock trading venue for tokenized U.S. stocks, co-chair Andrew Cuomo said in a tweet Monday.

The venture published a notice dated October 4 under the SEC's "Innovation Exemption," which since September 17 has allowed qualifying venues to trade tokenized stocks without registering as exchanges. OKXICE will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the notice says.

The SEC does not approve venues individually. A firm that meets the exemption's conditions notifies the agency and can then operate under it, subject to those conditions.

Cuomo, a former New York governor, called the filing "a landmark step toward a truly global, 24/7 Wall Street."

The notice lists Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX, alongside crypto-linked firms Coinbase, Circle, Strategy, Robinhood, BitGo and Securitize. Each tokenized stock will trade in a pair with one of three stablecoins: $USDC, $USDG or Tether's $USDT.

In June, an OKX spokesperson told Fortune the venture would focus on tokenizing NYSE-listed equities. Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft all list on the Nasdaq.

Chipmaker Cerebras Systems has already lodged a notice of issuer objection with the venture, the filing says. The exemption lets third parties tokenize a company's shares without its involvement, but a venue must notify the issuer and give it 30 days to object. If it does, the tokens cannot trade there. Cerebras does not appear on the notice's list.

The OKXICE venue

Trades will run through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on XLayer, a layer-2 blockchain, with a custom smart contract checking every transaction. Only wallets holding a non-transferable soulbound token, issued after identity, anti-money laundering and sanctions checks run by OKX's U.S. entity, can trade or supply liquidity.

The notice warns that tokenized prices, set solely by the pools, may diverge from the underlying shares, particularly outside regular exchange hours.

The tokens themselves come from an unaffiliated third party, described only as "the Tokenizer," which holds the underlying shares one-for-one through a registered broker-dealer. The notice does not name it. Holders are entitled to the same dividends and voting rights as ordinary shareholders, according to the filing.

ICE and OKX formed the 50-50 venture in June, three months after ICE took a minority stake in OKX at a $25 billion valuation. The pair had already brought crypto-native perpetual futures for oil to market for non-U.S. customers. Cuomo, who also served as New York's attorney general, has worked with OKX since 2023.

The SEC issued the exemption on September 17, months after Chair Paul Atkins walked back a January target following pushback from Wall Street groups, and days after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate.

Atkins said the SEC was acting "within its statutory authority," and officials described the exemption as a temporary bridge toward permanent rulemaking.

The exemption "could put DeFi trading platforms and liquidity pools in much more direct competition with traditional exchanges," Chris Hayes, executive director of the Coalition for Tokenized Markets, told Crypto in America at the time.

The notice gives no launch date.