The number of companies opposing OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent ICE’s tokenized stock platform has risen from nine to 16, with Microsoft, Alphabet and Goldman Sachs among them.
A current public notice dated October 19, reported by CoinDesk, listed seven new companies objecting to having their shares traded in tokenized form through the OKX-ICE venture. The addition of Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft to the list has brought the corporate approval and objection process back into focus for the plan to move traditional stocks onto crypto infrastructure.
We previously reported on objections from nine companies. The new notice lists the following additions:
- Microsoft (MSFT)
- Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) — Google’s parent company
- Goldman Sachs (GS)
- Qualcomm (QCOM)
- Caterpillar (CAT)
- McDonald’s (MCD)
- Western Digital (WDC)
The notice did not disclose the companies’ reasons or the dates they filed their objections.
15 of the 62 companies on the initial list have objected
The trading list initially proposed by OKX-ICE consisted of 63 stock tickers representing 62 companies. Alphabet’s inclusion in two different share classes accounts for the difference between the number of companies and the number of tickers.
Fifteen of those 62 companies are now among the objectors. No objections have been announced for the remaining 47 companies. Cerebras Systems, which brings the total to 16, was not on the initial trading list.
Plan aims to enable trading of U.S. stocks on crypto infrastructure
The joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange announced its plan on October 5. The platform aims to operate under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) five-year “Innovation Exemption” framework.
This framework allows eligible platforms to trade tokenized U.S. stocks through automated market makers and liquidity pools. It also gives companies whose shares would be traded this way the right to object. The growing number of objections matters for which companies’ shares investors will be able to access on the platform; the final scope of trading will take shape after this process.
Not investment advice.