Key Highlights
- Six additional companies, including Wells Fargo, Arm Holdings, and Intuit, have objected to tokenizing their shares on the OKX-ICE trading platform, according to a regulatory document reviewed by Reuters.
- The total number of companies opposing the listings has reached 22, with 16 of them listed on Nasdaq, including Microsoft and Alphabet.
- OKX-ICE initially planned to offer blockchain-based versions of shares in 63 NYSE-listed companies, enabling trading beyond conventional market hours.
Six additional companies, including Wells Fargo, Arm Holdings, and Intuit, have objected to the tokenization of their shares on a joint trading platform backed by crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, according to a regulatory document reviewed by Reuters.
According to the Reuters report, the document outlines the rules of the OKXICE venture and identifies the companies that have raised objections. In total, 22 companies have now objected. The document does not provide reasons for the objections.
The latest group of objections has not been previously reported. A spokesperson for Arm Holdings did not immediately provide comment, while Wells Fargo and Intuit declined to comment.
OKXICE planned to offer tokenized stocks representing shares in 63 U.S.-listed companies. Tokenized stocks are digital records of ownership in a company’s shares that are issued and transferred on a blockchain. The structure is intended to allow trading outside conventional market hours.
Under the SEC framework, platforms must notify issuers before listing tokenized versions of their stocks and are barred from offering those products if the issuer objects.
Earlier objections on this framework
On October 18, nine U.S.-listed companies, including Broadcom, Verizon Communications, and UnitedHealth Group, formally objected to the trading of tokenized versions of their shares on the OKXICE platform. Those objections prevented the venue from offering the affected stocks.
The October 18 objections marked the first measurable response from listed companies to third-party tokenization under the SEC’s new framework. The latest filings bring the cumulative total of objecting companies to 22. Sixteen of the objecting companies, including Microsoft and Alphabet, are listed on Nasdaq.
Regulatory context on innovation exemption
The SEC introduced an innovation exemption on September 17 that allows platforms to facilitate trading of tokenized stocks under certain conditions. The exemption requires platforms to notify companies in advance and prohibits listing if the issuer objects.
Better Markets, a nonprofit advocacy group, filed a comment letter with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on October 22, 2026, calling SEC’s innovation exemption a mess. In the letter, the organization raised legal and policy concerns about the SEC’s temporary conditional exemption for tokenized securities venues.
Better Markets argued that the agency should have established the framework through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, instead of issuing an exemptive order under Section 36(a)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The group also challenged the decision to make the exemption effective before the Commission had received public comments.
The combination of earlier and more recent objections reduces the number of stocks available for the planned OKXICE platform from the original list of 63. The platform’s launch remains subject to the completion of the issuer opt-out process and other regulatory conditions.
No official statements from OKX or Intercontinental Exchange regarding the additional objections were available at the time of reporting. The regulatory document confirms the expanded list of companies that have chosen not to permit tokenization of their shares on the joint venture’s platform.
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