OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, will open their joint tokenized stock venue on Nov. 23, the companies said Wednesday. The platform will offer more than 70 assets under a temporary U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) exemption, even though 67 companies — including Apple, Tesla and Meta — have already filed written objections.

Per the OKX announcement, more than 70 assets are expected to be listed, including securities of Better.com, BitGo, Circle, Coinbase, Robinhood, Securitize and Strategy (MSTR), along with 59 exchange-traded funds from Direxion. Strategy will also list preferred stocks such as STRC.

Access at launch is limited to eligible U.S. customers of OKX Inc. who have activated a CeDeFi Wallet, passed identity checks and completed onboarding with the joint venture. The venture, called OKXICE, is owned equally by ICE and OKC USA Holding Inc., an OKX affiliate. Trading will run around the clock in the OKX app — a schedule that departs from the fixed weekday sessions of traditional U.S. stock exchanges.

“The future of finance is onchain, and we have an opportunity to build it here in America, with the standards, safeguards and ambition that investors expect,” said former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who co-chairs OKXICE alongside Trabue Bland.

The companies did not disclose how many of the more than 70 assets will trade on the first day, or how much liquidity the pools will hold at the open. The venue is not a registered exchange or broker-dealer and has not been approved by the SEC, the announcement said.

How the venue works

Trading will run through automated market maker pools built on Uniswap v4 and deployed on X Layer, the Ethereum layer-2 network operated by OKX. Only approved wallets may trade or add liquidity.

Securitize will provide the tokenization infrastructure. According to a Nov. 5 public notice required under the exemption, each token represents a security entitlement backed one-for-one by a U.S. share held by a registered broker-dealer, and holders keep the usual shareholder rights, including dividends, voting and corporate actions.

Customers will hold the tokens in their own wallets; OKXICE will not hold the assets or the private keys. That self-custody structure differs from a conventional brokerage account, where the firm holds customer securities. The tokens will be paired with payment stablecoins such as USDC and USDG. The venue does not operate an order book, does not extend credit and does not conduct primary offerings, the notice said.

67 issuers have already objected

The same Nov. 5 notice lists 67 issuers that had filed written objections by that date, among them Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Netflix, Nvidia, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Costco, Nike and Home Depot. That is up from 50 objectors named in an Oct. 30 notice.

The objections stem from the SEC’s five-year Innovation Exemption, issued Sept. 17, which allows tokenized securities venues to trade blockchain versions of U.S. stocks through automated market makers without registering as exchanges — a framework on which the SEC has requested public comment. When an unaffiliated third party tokenizes a company’s stock, the venue must notify the issuer, which then has 30 days to object in writing. The SEC’s innovation exemption page lists OKXICE TSV as having submitted a notice of intent on Oct. 4.

The companies that have chosen to participate are mostly crypto-linked. Strategy, the largest public bitcoin treasury company, is listing both its common stock and its preferred shares.

“Tokenization on the OKXICE TSV is a natural next step toward making Digital Credit accessible to investors around the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Strategy President and Chief Executive Phong Le said in the announcement, referring to preferreds such as STRC. Le has also called bitcoin “Digital Capital.”

For context, a tokenized stock is a blockchain token backed one-for-one by a real share. Under the Innovation Exemption, the venue can list these tokens without the issuing company’s consent unless the company objects within 30 days.

The open question is whether a venue that has lost Apple, Tesla, Nvidia and most of the rest of the largest U.S. companies can still draw enough trading to matter when it opens in 12 days — and whether more issuers object before then. Any additional objections would surface in future notices under the exemption.

This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.