OKX And NYSE Owner's Venture Files To Trade 63 Tokenized Stocks Onchain

OKXICE, the joint venture between OKX and New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange, has notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it will run a venue for trading tokenized U.S. stocks onchain, according to a public notice dated Oct. 4. The notice lists 63 tickers.

It is the first venue to file under the conditional exemption the SEC issued on Sept. 17, which lets tokenized National Market System stocks trade on permissioned automated market makers rather than on registered exchanges. Nvidia, Tesla and Apple shares would trade in Uniswap v4 pools on X Layer, the chain OKX operates.

OKXICE TSV is operated by OKXICE LLC, a Texas company owned 50% by Intercontinental Exchange Holdings and 50% by OKC USA Holding, the notice says. The pools carry a smart contract extension OKXICE calls the TSV Hook, which checks that a wallet holds a non-transferable soulbound token before any trade, transfer or liquidity action. Each tokenized stock is paired with USDC, USDG or USDT.

OKXICE does not run an order book, hold customer assets, extend credit or conduct primary offerings, according to the notice. A third-party tokenizer, acting through a registered broker-dealer, holds the underlying shares one-for-one against tokens outstanding, and participants mint and redeem directly with it. The notice does not name the tokenizer.

"The future of markets is real ownership, onchain. Full shareholder rights are what make that possible. This is an important step toward making public markets more open, seamless and always available," said Star Xu, Founder and CEO of OKX.

Cuomo Makes The Pitch

Andrew M. Cuomo, the former New York governor who joined OKX's board of directors in July, announced the filing himself in a post on X on Oct. 4. OKX said in July that Cuomo had advised the exchange on U.S. regulatory and institutional strategy since 2023.

"This is a landmark step toward a truly global, 24/7 Wall Street — and toward keeping the future of digital finance anchored here in the United States," Cuomo wrote.

One Issuer Said No

OKXICE has received a Notice of Issuer Objection from Cerebras Systems Inc. (CBRS) as of the date of the notice, the document says. Cerebras does not appear among the 63 tickers listed.

The exemption requires a venue to give written notice and an opportunity to object to the issuer before trading a tokenized stock created by an unaffiliated third party, according to the SEC. OKXICE said in its announcement that issuers have 30 days to opt out. The notice itself does not state a window.

A Hook For Equities

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said on Oct. 5 he was excited to see the venue "launching as a Uniswap v4 hook." He added: "v4 hooks are the ideal market structure for TSVs which will bring new assets and users to the protocol."

Hooks are contracts that run custom logic at set points in a Uniswap v4 pool's lifecycle. Only OKXICE may create pools using the TSV Hook, the notice says, and the hook verifies the soulbound token before OKXICE provides an executable quote and again before each transaction. The pool fee for each pair is set when the pool is created and cannot be changed afterward.

It is the second permissioning design built on v4 pools disclosed in a week. SMBC Nikko and Nethermind said on Oct. 2 they plan compliance hooks for Uniswap pools. Adams defended the hook architecture in September after 0x called it a mistake.

Caps On Symbols And Volume

The exemption caps a venue at 75 symbols and 0.25% of the prior month's average daily volume for stocks in Tier 1 of the Limit Up-Limit Down plan, and 250 symbols and 2.5% of average daily volume for Tier 2, the notice says. OKXICE submits the prior month's average daily volume to its smart contracts each month, and the contracts run a daily volume total that is checked before a trade completes.

The relief expires five years after publication, the SEC said when it issued the order. OKXICE is not registered with the SEC in any capacity for the activities it performs under the exemption, is not subject to Regulation NMS, and is not covered by the fair-access rule that applies to registered exchanges and alternative trading systems, the notice says. Denials of access are not subject to SEC review.

Three Names Without A Listing

The 63 tickers include Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX), Securitize Corp. (SECZ) and BitGo Holdings, Inc. (BTGO). OKXICE's announcement describes the notice as covering more than 60 companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges.

OKB traded at $126.73 on Monday, up 4.6% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. UNI traded at $9.01, down 0.2%. X Layer holds $167 million in total value locked, DefiLlama data shows.

ICE has been working both sides of the trade. The exchange operator's parent also agreed with Blockchain.com in September to explore 24/7 tokenized stock trading on the NYSE side.

EDITOR'S NOTE — DRAFT, $NOT CLEARED. Cuomo's quote is sourced to his own Oct. 4 post on X. The Wachsman release calls him "Co-Chair of OKXICE"; that title is not in the public notice, on okx.com/okxicetsv or in OKX's July board announcement, so the copy uses the role OKX published. Confirm the title before publishing. The Star Xu quote is still release-sourced and unconfirmed — OKX's X account could not be read this morning. Adams' quote is from his Oct. 5 post, split into a partial quote and a full second sentence so his handles are not rewritten inside quotation marks. Three questions are outstanding with Olivia Sim at Wachsman and have not been sent: the source of the 30-day opt-out window; how SpaceX, Securitize and BitGo fit the "listed on U.S. stock exchanges" description; and the identity of the tokenizer, which the notice does not name. Cerebras has not been contacted about its objection. Prices are as of Monday morning and need a refresh at publish.