OKX-ICE Tokenization Plan Faces Objections From Dozens of Companies

Companies cited price effects, liquidity, and volatility, while others questioned custody and shareholder rights in tokenized stocks.

A total of 62 publicly traded firms have objected to having their shares tokenized by OKX and ICE.

The latest are aircraft maker Boeing, Amsterdam-based AI infrastructure provider Nebius, and ServiceNow, a major enterprise software company.

Objections to Stock Tokenization Pile Up

Recall that early last month, reports emerged that crypto trading platform OKX and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, had sought approval from the SEC to start trading the tokenized shares of at least 63 companies listed on the NYSE.

This was after the agency introduced a temporary innovation exemption in September that allowed some platforms to offer secondary trading of tokenized US stocks via liquidity pools and permissioned market makers.

Some of the companies earmarked by the OKXICE venture included JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, beverage maker Coca-Cola, and retail giant Walmart, and as of November 2, all of them, alongside 46 others, had filed objections against the plan.

According to journalist Eleanor Terrett, some of the issuers were worried about how their share prices and liquidity could be affected by tokenization. Others, she explained, had adopted a wait-and-see stance, with issues around the rights of shareholders and market transparency, as well as OKX being domiciled offshore, coming to the fore.

By November 3, the objectors increased to 56, with Wall Street heavyweights such as Tesla and sister company SpaceX, Amazon, SoFi Technologies, and streaming giant Netflix also saying no to the idea.

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It didn’t stop there. Yesterday, Terrett noted that energy equipment maker GE Vernova, Apple, and Home Depot had also objected to third-party tokenization of their shares, meaning that six members of the group of dominant, high-market-cap tech and growth companies known as the “magnificent seven” had said no.

Today’s announcements by Nebius, Boeing, and ServiceNow bring the total number of firms that had originally been in the OKXICE tokenization list that have refused to play ball to 54, with another eight that hadn’t been included preemptively taking themselves out, to make it 62.

Critics Question Whether OKXICE Can Work

When the first 50 companies opted out, Figure CEO Mike Cagney questioned the suitability of the OKXICE venue, arguing that it would make execution worse since an automated market maker, which prices trades from a pool of funds, cannot match orders in the same way a limit order book would.

“We’re going to have to do more than this SEC sandbox to get stocks on public blockchains,” he wrote on X. “Native equity on chain, issued by the company, available for borrow and loan in DeFi. That is the way.”

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley has taken another route, announcing recently that it had tokenized US stocks and Treasuries through the services of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which went live on October 28. It opened with 34 securities, with each token backed 1-to-1 by an asset held in custody.