OKX and Intercontinental Exchange filed to trade 63 tokenized US stocks around the clock with stablecoins, each backed by a real share. Launch depends on a 30-day window for companies to say no, plus tight SEC limits.
On 5 October, OKXICE filed with the SEC to list tokenized versions of 63 US-listed stocks, including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and JPMorgan.
OKXICE is a 50-50 joint venture between the crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange.
The tokens would trade 24/7 on X Layer, OKX’s own blockchain, and buyers would pay with USDC, USDT or USDG.
How the OKXICE model works
Each token is backed 1:1. One Nvidia token means one Nvidia share, held by a registered broker-dealer.
Holders get the same economic and voting rights as normal shareholders. Dividends and proxy materials pass through to the token holder.
Trading doesn’t use a normal order book. It runs through automated market maker (AMM) pools built on Uniswap’s infrastructure, and the pools are permissioned. Only approved participants who pass identity and anti-money-laundering checks can trade.
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is co-chair of OKXICE. His line on the launch: “The market never sleeps, so why should trading? Ownership shouldn’t have office hours.”
The SEC rules it’s filing under
OKXICE is using the SEC’s “innovation exemption,” issued on 17 September. It runs for 5 years, until 17 September 2031, and came after the Clarity Act failed to move forward in the Senate.
The exemption lets tokenized stock venues operate without registering as a full national securities exchange. It comes with hard limits:
- Tier 1 (S&P 500 and Russell 1000 stocks): up to 75 symbols per venue, with trading capped at 0.25% of the stock’s average daily volume from the previous month.
- Tier 2 (other listed stocks): up to 250 symbols, capped at 2.5% of average daily volume.
At 63 stocks, OKXICE sits just under the Tier 1 symbol limit.
The volume cap is the bigger constraint. At 0.25%, for every $400 of a large-cap stock traded on regular markets, at most $1 can trade on a venue like this. For now, it’s a small side market.
Retail and institutional investors can both use these venues, according to law firm Sidley’s summary of the exemption, as long as they meet the venue’s access checks.
What can still stop the launch
Every company on the list gets 30 calendar days’ notice before its tokenized stock can trade. If a company objects in that window, its stock can’t trade on that venue.
CoinDesk reports that Cerebras has already objected. TD Securities analysts put it simply: “No symbol is a given.”
Two other items are still open:
- OKXICE needs approval to operate as a US-registered broker-dealer and futures commission merchant.
- It has to meet the exemption’s operating conditions before going live, and there’s no launch date yet.
How this differs from tokenized stocks already trading
Tokenized stocks aren’t new. The market was worth about $2.8B in August, according to The Block. Ondo was the biggest issuer at $957M, followed by Binance’s bStock at $622M.
Most of those products sit outside the US and aren’t open to US persons. Some don’t come with ownership at all. OKX’s own offshore tokenized stocks, for example, don’t represent ownership in the company and carry no voting rights.
OKXICE would be inside US rules, with full shareholder rights, and co-owned by the company that runs the world’s biggest stock exchange.
ICE’s ties to OKX go back to March 2026, when it invested $200M in OKX at a valuation of about $25B.
What this means for crypto teams
If OKXICE launches, a few parts of the crypto market get something new:
- Stablecoin issuers: every trade settles in USDC, USDT or USDG, so each stock trade is also stablecoin volume.
- X Layer: OKX’s chain would carry regulated US equities, a very different kind of asset from memecoins and DeFi tokens.
- DeFi builders: Uniswap’s AMM design would run inside a permissioned, SEC-supervised venue. That’s a live test of DeFi tools under securities rules.
- Offshore tokenized stock issuers: they’d face a US competitor with real shareholder rights and NYSE’s owner behind it.
Not everyone expects fast uptake. TD Securities sees “limited near-term relevance for institutional investors,” since big funds can already buy these stocks cheaply and the rules are still new.
The change is who’s building it. Until now, tokenized stocks came mostly from crypto-native issuers selling outside the US. This one comes from the NYSE’s parent, under US rules.
