JPMorgan, Coca-Cola and Dell Object to OKX-ICE Tokenized Stock Trading Plan

JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola and Dell Technologies have joined a growing group of companies objecting to a tokenized stock trading plan from crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the NYSE. Nearly half of the companies on the venture's original roster have now opted out.

An updated public notice from OKXICE, the firms' joint venture, was dated Tuesday, Oct. 27. It added seven objectors, among them Applied Materials, Adobe and Sandisk, alongside the three named above. Disclosed objections now total 33, up from 26 in the previous day's notice.

According to CoinDesk's tally, all seven newly disclosed objectors were among the 62 companies initially proposed for trading. That brings objections from the original roster to 30, or about 48%. Some other objecting firms, including Wells Fargo, Arm and Cerebras, were not listed in that original filing.

The pushback points to issuer caution about a new market structure emerging under the SEC's Innovation Exemption. The framework gives trading venues room to test blockchain-based stock trading, but experts have told CoinDesk that companies are still weighing how such markets would function and what they stand to gain from them.

OKXICE issued its first notice on Oct. 4. It set out plans for round-the-clock trading of tokenized stocks through Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX's XLayer blockchain, with transactions settled in stablecoins. The venture would operate under the SEC's five-year exemption, which lets qualifying platforms trade tokenized stocks using automated market makers. Companies have 30 days after being notified to object to their inclusion.

OKXICE co-chairman Andrew Cuomo has said that many companies were expected to wait and see how the market develops before taking part. He described the SEC's limited experiment as a sandbox and a model demonstration.