OKX and NYSE Owner ICE Plan 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading Under SEC Exemption

OKXICE, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to run a Tokenized Securities Venue (TSV) operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week under the SEC's Innovation Exemption. The filing, dated October 4, lists tokenized versions of more than 60 U.S.-listed equities and says each token would trade against one of three stablecoins: USDC, USDG or Tether's USDT. The venue plans to route trades through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on XLayer, a layer-2 blockchain, using a bespoke smart contract to validate each transaction. Trading and liquidity provision would be restricted to wallets that hold a non-transferable soulbound token issued only after identity verification, anti-money-laundering and sanctions checks carried out by OKX's U.S. entity. According to the notice, the tokens are issued by an unaffiliated third party identified only as "the Tokenizer," which would hold the underlying shares one-for-one via a registered broker-dealer. Holders of the tokens would be entitled to the same dividends and voting rights as ordinary shareholders, the filing says. The notice warns that prices set by the liquidity pools could diverge from the underlying share prices, especially outside regular exchange hours. The Innovation Exemption allows firms meeting its conditions to operate tokenized securities venues without registering as national securities exchanges; the SEC does not individually approve venues under the exemption. The filing process requires the venue to notify issuers so they may object within 30 days; the filing says chipmaker Cerebras Systems has filed an issuer objection. The notice does not name the Tokenizer, nor does it give a launch date for the venue. OKXICE was formed in June after ICE took a minority stake in OKX at a reported $25 billion valuation. The SEC issued the Innovation Exemption on September 17 as a temporary bridge toward permanent rulemaking, and agency officials have framed it as an action taken within statutory authority. OKXICE co-chair Andrew Cuomo described the filing on social media as "a major step" toward a global, round-the-clock Wall Street.