OKX and NYSE Owner ICE Plan 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading Under SEC Exemption
OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has notified the SEC that it intends to launch a round-the-clock venue for trading tokenized U.S. stocks, according to co-chair Andrew Cuomo in a Monday post on X.
The venture published a notice dated October 4 under the SEC's “Innovation Exemption,” which, since September 17, has allowed qualifying venues to trade tokenized stocks without registering as exchanges. The notice says OKXICE will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Today we are announcing a major step forward for OKXICE, the joint venture between @okx and Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of @NYSE: OKXICE has notified the SEC that we intend to launch our Tokenized Securities Venue (TSV) under the SEC’s new Innovation Exemption.… — Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 5, 2026”
The SEC does not approve venues individually. A firm that satisfies the exemption's conditions notifies the agency and may then operate under the exemption, subject to those conditions.
Cuomo, a former governor of New York, described the filing as “a landmark step toward a truly global, 24/7 Wall Street.”
The notice lists Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX, as well as crypto-linked companies including Coinbase, Circle, Strategy, Robinhood, BitGo and Securitize. Each tokenized stock will trade against one of three stablecoins: USDC, USDG or Tether's USDT.
In June, an OKX spokesperson told Fortune that the venture would focus on tokenizing equities listed on the NYSE. Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft are all listed on the Nasdaq.
Chipmaker Cerebras Systems has already submitted an issuer objection notice to the venture, according to the filing. The exemption allows third parties to tokenize a company's shares without the company's involvement, but a venue must notify the issuer and give it 30 days to object. If the issuer objects, the tokens cannot trade on that venue. Cerebras does not appear on the notice's list.
The OKXICE venue
Trading will take place through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on XLayer, a layer-2 blockchain, with a custom smart contract checking every transaction. Only wallets holding a non-transferable soulbound token, issued after identity, anti-money laundering and sanctions checks conducted by OKX's U.S. entity, will be able to trade or provide liquidity.
The notice warns that tokenized prices, which are determined solely by the pools, may diverge from the prices of the underlying shares, particularly outside regular exchange hours.
The tokens themselves are issued by an unaffiliated third party described only as “the Tokenizer,” which holds the underlying shares on a one-for-one basis through a registered broker-dealer. The notice does not identify the Tokenizer. According to the filing, holders are entitled to the same dividends and voting rights as ordinary shareholders.
ICE and OKX formed the 50-50 venture in June, three months after ICE acquired a minority stake in OKX at a $25 billion valuation. The two companies had already brought crypto-native perpetual futures for oil to market for non-U.S. customers. Cuomo, who also served as New York's attorney general, has worked with OKX since 2023.
The SEC issued the exemption on September 17, months after Chair Paul Atkins backed away from a January target following opposition from Wall Street groups, and days after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate.
Atkins said the SEC was acting “within its statutory authority,” while officials described the exemption as a temporary bridge toward permanent rulemaking.
The exemption “could put DeFi trading platforms and liquidity pools in much more direct competition with traditional exchanges,” Chris Hayes, executive director of the Coalition for Tokenized Markets, told Crypto in America at the time.
The notice does not provide a launch date.