Tokenized stocks hit a wall: 56 issuers tell OKXICE to keep their shares off the chain

SpaceX, Tesla and Amazon have joined 53 other companies in objecting to tokenized versions of their shares being offered on OKXICE TSV, the planned trading venue operated by OKX and NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange. The additions, listed in an updated notice dated Monday and a Nov. 2 public notice, bring the total number of objecting issuers to 56. Other new names are Netflix, Lam Research and SoFi Technologies; SpaceX trades under the ticker SPCX.

The latest group extends a list that reached 50 companies in the venue’s Oct. 30 notice, when Nvidia, Costco and Nike headed a 12-company batch that also included Micron, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Reddit, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Corning, Bloom Energy, IREN and USA Rare Earth. Before that, Walmart and Eli Lilly joined seven other issuers in the Oct. 28 update, raising the total to 38, while the first nine objectors appeared on Oct. 15. Previous additions included Cigna Group, Carnival, Arcos Dorados, JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola and Dell, alongside Microsoft, Alphabet, AMD, Intel and Broadcom. Apple remains one of the few megacap companies absent from the list.

Under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s five-year Innovation Exemption, introduced in September after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate, a venue must notify a company before offering third-party tokenized versions of its shares. If the company objects in writing within 30 days, that stock cannot be made available on the venue. The objection applies only to that venue. OKXICE said it can also list shares tokenized by the issuers themselves, although it did not identify any, and that tokenized stocks offered through the venue are not restricted to trading on OKXICE alone.

OKXICE TSV, a 50-50 joint venture between Intercontinental Exchange and OKX’s U.S. holding company, plans to offer tokenized U.S. stocks 24/7 through permissioned Uniswap v4 pools on OKX’s XLayer blockchain, paired with stablecoins such as USDC. Users must pass identity and sanctions checks and hold a nontransferable “soulbound” token that the venue’s smart contracts verify before every transaction.

SpaceX’s objection follows significant offshore trading in tokenized versions of its shares since its June public offering. Backpack Securities’ SPCX token recorded $1.08 billion in onchain trading volume in June, while Kraken’s SPCXx token recorded $852 million. Nasdaq warned issuers in September that they “must be cautious about their participation,” citing the risk of fragmented liquidity. OKXICE co-chair and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said during an Oct. 30 press conference that as people see the benefits of tokenization, “you’ll see more and more companies participate.”