Six more companies, including banking giant Wells Fargo, chip designer Arm Holdings, and financial software firm Intuit, have objected to plans by crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) to offer on-chain tokenized versions of their shares, bringing the total number of objecting companies to 22, according to a regulatory document reviewed by Reuters, as reported by BitcoinKE.

The disclosures come less than a week after seven further companies were formally named in an updated notice dated October 19, a group that included Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, Caterpillar, McDonald's, and Western Digital. They joined earlier objectors including Broadcom, Verizon, and United Health Group. The growing list now spans banking, technology, telecommunications, healthcare, industrials, and consumer brands — a sectoral spread that carries the dispute well beyond the cryptocurrency industry itself.

OKX and ICE had planned to tokenize 63 stocks through their joint venture, OKXICE. ICE is the owner and operator of the New York Stock Exchange, while OKX ranks among the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Tokenization involves representing traditional financial assets as digital tokens on a blockchain, potentially enabling round-the-clock trading and faster settlement than conventional market hours allow.

The companies' objections pose a mounting challenge to the initiative despite the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent introduction of a regulatory exemption for tokenized securities. Under the framework, platforms must notify companies before listing tokenized versions of their shares and cannot proceed if an issuer objects. That mechanism effectively blocks OKXICE from tokenizing the shares of the 22 objecting companies for as long as their objections stand — making issuer consent, rather than the exemption alone, the deciding factor in how much of the 63-stock lineup can ultimately be tokenized. On the figures in the filing, the objections now cover roughly a third of the planned list, leaving 41 of the 63 names outside the objection tally.

The regulatory document does not specify why the companies objected. Nasdaq, which operates a competing U.S. equities marketplace, has also raised concerns that inadequately regulated tokenized stocks could fragment market liquidity and undermine price discovery — the process by which markets arrive at prices for securities. Any further objections would be recorded through the same notification process under the framework. With the additions, opposition to the 63-stock tokenization plan now stands at 22 companies.