CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) have told OKXICE that they do not want tokenized versions of their shares to trade on the platform's new venue.

The venue operates under a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) exemption that allows it to treat 30 days of silence from an issuer as consent to have its stock tokenized.

Both CoreWeave and Broadcom have refused to allow tokenized versions of their stock to trade on OKXICE's new venue. AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ: CBRS) has also kept its tokens off OKXICE. Stock tokens already circulating on other platforms are untouched.

How the SEC exemption works

The new venue operates under the SEC's “Innovation Exemption,” an order the agency issued and put into effect on September 17. Under the order, permissioned onchain trading platforms — which the SEC calls Tokenized Securities Venues — do not count as “exchanges,” and the firms providing liquidity on them do not have to register as “dealers.”

Davis Polk, which advised a client on the matter, says the relief lasts five years, until September 17, 2031.

Before a venue can list a token made by a third party, it has to give the company a heads-up. The company then has one month to say no, or the venue will start trading. Companies usually have no say over whether a national exchange trades their shares, so the right to object is new.

What OKXICE plans to list

OKXICE filed a notice on October 4 saying it wants to list tokens tied to more than 60 U.S.-listed companies, including Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and SpaceX, as well as crypto-tied firms such as Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Circle (NYSE: CRCL), Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD), BitGo (NYSE: BTGO) and Securitize.

Each tokenized stock would trade against either USDC, USDG or Tether's USDT. The venue intends to trade 24/7. Notably, its filing does not name the firm minting the tokens.

Whether more of the 60-plus named companies follow CoreWeave, Broadcom and Cerebras in objecting is an early measure of how much friction the new framework produces in practice.

Limits of an objection

Davis Polk says a company can only object to a venue that sends it a notice. The objection does not stop anyone from tokenizing the company's elsewhere, and the SEC order has no effect on trading overseas. For CoreWeave and Broadcom, the objections therefore apply only to OKXICE itself.

As of September 13, about $2.43 billion worth of tokenized stock — roughly 84.5% of the whole segment — had been issued without the company's permission. Tokens issued with consent made up only about $365 million and had hardly grown in a year.

That imbalance — most of the sector built without issuer sign-off — is the backdrop for the changes issuers are now pressing with the SEC.

Cryptopolitan reported that the broker Robinhood lists more than 190 stock tokens, which are digital products that track the prices of publicly traded companies. AMC, the company behind one of those stocks, sent Robinhood a cease-and-desist demand over a token tied to AMC shares, and Robinhood refused.

Issuers seek a stronger say

In an October 2 comment letter, Computershare asked the SEC to let companies file a standing objection, so they would not have to respond to each venue's notice separately. It also asked for a central, searchable register that would list which venues are seeking to list tokens and which companies have objected.

Law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth echoed the sentiment in an October 8 letter, noting that crypto emails often get caught in spam filters, which can lead to a notice being missed. Its clients want the process changed so that a company has to give clear consent before its stock is tokenized. They want the deadline removed, and they also want a public database identifying shares that may not be tokenized.

Whether the SEC keeps the 30-day silence-as-consent default or moves toward the opt-in model its commenters want is the key detail to watch as the five-year exemption runs its course.