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The joint venture led by crypto firm OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, proposed round-the-clock trading in tokenised shares of 62 public companies. However, 54 companies in that original lineup had objected to their inclusion, according to the Fortune report. The SEC also requires qualifying tokens to provide the same rights and privileges as equivalent traditional shares. According to Fortune, companies have 30 days from the date they receive notice to object and block their inclusion on the platform. Fortune reported that Boeing and ServiceNow joined the objection list this week, following Apple, Home Depot, and GE Vernova the day before. The resistance also extended beyond the venture’s original selection.
The opposition includes Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Nvidia, JPMorgan Chase and Walmart, putting much of the proposed offering at risk. Co-chaired by former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, the venture has not confirmed whether the objections will change its launch plans.
Wells Fargo, Nebius Group, Arm Holdings, Cerebras Systems and Cigna Group were among companies outside that lineup that filed objections. Applied Optoelectronics, a networking equipment manufacturer that objected, previously told Fortune that the framework’s potential effects on its stock remained unclear. OKXICE’s plan for blockchain-based stock trading meets rising corporate resistance. The resistance nevertheless exposes a central challenge: regulatory permission to offer tokenised stocks does not guarantee that the companies behind those stocks will accept the arrangement. Tokenised shares are digital representations of stocks recorded on a blockchain, a shared digital ledger. OKXICE proposed using that technology to offer trading beyond conventional stock-market hours. The venture comes after a temporary exemption issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in September. It allows qualifying platforms to trade tokenised stocks without registering as national securities exchanges, under certain conditions. Those conditions include notifying a company before offering shares tokenised by an unaffiliated third party and giving it an opportunity to object.
Its concerns included pricing, liquidity, which means how easily shares can be bought or sold and volatility, meaning fluctuations in price.
The company also worried that investors might wrongly assume it sponsored or endorsed the tokenised offering. “At this stage, we don’t see a clear benefit to AOI or our shareholders that justifies these uncertainties,” a company spokesperson said. In Fortune’s reported tally, the eight original candidates without disclosed objections were Circle Internet Group, Coinbase, Robinhood, BitGo, Strategy, Securitize, Palantir and Super Micro Computer. Most have ties to cryptocurrency or blockchain. However, the absence of an objection does not mean a company endorses the venture. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.