OKX and NYSE Owner Plan 24/7 Tokenized Stock Market
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OKX and NYSE parent ICE have notified the SEC of plans for a 24/7 tokenized-stock venue covering more than 60 companies, but the filing is not an individual SEC approval and no launch date has been announced.
By Matt BrienenOKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, are moving forward with plans for a round-the-clock tokenized-stock trading venue in the United States.
Their 50-50 joint venture, OKXICE, has notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to operate under the agency’s new Innovation Exemption. The proposed venue would allow eligible users to trade tokenized versions of more than 60 companies, including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, Coinbase, Circle, Strategy, Robinhood and SpaceX.
The October 4 notice is an important regulatory step, but it should not be described as an individual SEC approval. The exemption allows a qualifying venue to operate if it satisfies the framework’s conditions and provides the required notice. OKXICE has not announced a launch date.
How the Tokenized Market Would Work
Rather than using a conventional stock-exchange order book, the proposed platform would process trades through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools deployed on X Layer, OKX’s layer-2 blockchain. Each tokenized security would trade against USDC, USDG or Tether’s USDT.
Access would remain permissioned despite the use of blockchain infrastructure. Users would need a non-transferable token tied to their wallets after completing identity, anti-money-laundering and sanctions screening through OKX’s U.S. entity. The venue’s smart contracts would check that credential before allowing a wallet to trade or provide liquidity.
According to the notice, an unnamed third-party tokenizer would hold the corresponding shares one-for-one through a registered broker-dealer. The tokenized assets are intended to carry the same dividends and voting rights as the underlying shares, distinguishing them from synthetic products that merely track a stock’s price.
Trading Would Continue Around the Clock
The most visible difference from traditional U.S. equity markets would be continuous trading. OKXICE plans to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including nights, weekends and periods when the underlying stock exchanges are closed.
That could give investors greater flexibility, particularly across international time zones. It would also connect tokenized securities with stablecoin settlement and self-custodial wallets, bringing elements of decentralized finance into a regulated securities framework.
Continuous trading creates additional risks, however. Prices inside the liquidity pools would be determined by activity on the tokenized venue and could diverge from the underlying shares, especially while traditional exchanges are closed. Liquidity may also be thinner during off-hours, potentially producing wider spreads and sharper price movements.
A token representing a share is therefore not guaranteed to trade at exactly the same price as that share at every moment. The proposed one-for-one backing may support the relationship between the two, but it does not eliminate execution, liquidity, smart-contract or market-structure risks.
Companies Can Object to Tokenization
The SEC framework allows third parties to tokenize a company’s shares without the company directly participating in the product. Before trading begins, however, the venue must notify the issuer and provide a 30-day period in which it can object.
If an issuer objects, its tokenized securities cannot be offered on that venue. Chipmaker Cerebras Systems has already submitted an objection and does not appear on OKXICE’s proposed list, according to the filing described by Decrypt.
That opt-out process is significant because tokenized securities introduce questions surrounding shareholder records, voting, dividends and corporate actions. The structure may preserve the economic and governance rights attached to traditional shares, but companies can still decline to have third parties create tokenized versions for this particular market.
A Test of Onchain Wall Street
The SEC introduced its temporary and conditional Innovation Exemption on September 17. It permits limited trading of tokenized U.S. stocks through qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues while exempting those venues from being treated as conventional exchanges under specific conditions.
OKXICE’s notice represents one of the clearest attempts yet to use that framework at scale. The involvement of ICE gives the project a direct link to established financial-market infrastructure, while OKX contributes crypto trading, stablecoin and blockchain expertise.
Still, this remains a planned venue rather than a completed launch. Its eventual significance will depend on whether it satisfies all regulatory conditions, which companies remain in the proposed market after the objection period, when trading begins and whether enough liquidity develops to keep token prices aligned with their underlying shares.
If the model works, it could become an important bridge between traditional equities and onchain markets. For now, it is best understood as a regulated experiment in 24/7 tokenized trading—not the replacement of the existing stock market and not a blanket SEC endorsement of every asset the venture intends to offer.