Broadcom, Verizon and UnitedHealth among eight newly disclosed OKXICE objectors

Broadcom, Verizon and UnitedHealth are among eight newly disclosed issuers that objected to having their shares traded on OKXICE's planned tokenized-stock venue. The objections appeared in an October 15 public notice from OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange.

The notice names nine objecting companies in total, including Cerebras Systems, which formally opted out of being listed earlier. The rest of the newly disclosed group is AppLovin, Applied Digital, Rocket Lab, CoreWeave and Applied Optoelectronics. The notice did not disclose why the companies objected or when they submitted their notices.

OKXICE announced on October 5 that it had notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of plans to launch the venue, initially targeting shares of 63 U.S.-listed companies. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the venture's co-chair, announced the move on X.

The venue would operate under the SEC's five-year "Innovation Exemption," issued September 17, which allows qualifying platforms to trade tokenized U.S. stocks using automated market makers and liquidity pools. Tokenized stocks are blockchain-based representations of shares; OKXICE plans to run around the clock using Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX's XLayer blockchain, with trades settled in stablecoins. Under the model described in its notice, underlying shares would be held one-for-one against outstanding tokens through a registered broker-dealer, and token holders must receive equivalent rights, including dividends and voting rights.

Nasdaq said separately that it would opt out of having its own shares tokenized under the framework, according to an FAQ on its website. A Nasdaq spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the company does not want its shares trading on a venue that does not display best prices in real time or report to the consolidated tape, which aggregates stock-market trading data. Nasdaq is not among the nine issuers named in OKXICE's notice.

Issuer interest looks thin beyond a narrow set of crypto-linked names. Conversations with dozens of issuers showed "little interest in tokenizing their shares outside a small group of crypto-adjacent companies," TD Securities analysts led by Reid Noch, the firm's vice president of U.S. equity market structure, wrote in a report shared with CoinDesk.

The listing list and the objection list overlap: OKXICE's initial 63-company target set can absorb several opt-outs and still leave the venue with a book of names, but each objection it discloses chips at the premise that issuers want their stock on a 24-hour tokenized venue. The exemption runs five years, which sets the clock on whether the model finds issuers or keeps collecting refusals.