OKX-ICE Venture Files for Tokenized Stock Venue

OKXICE LLC, the joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, has notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to operate a Tokenized Securities Venue offering round-the-clock trading in U.S. equities. According to Bloomberg’s report on the October 4 filing, the initial proposal covers 63 U.S.-listed companies. The filing represents one of the first concrete attempts to use the SEC’s new Innovation Exemption for a production tokenized-stock market.

The framework differs materially from offshore stock-linked tokens that provide economic exposure without conventional shareholder status. Under the SEC’s official Innovation Exemption, eligible tokenized NMS stocks must provide holders with the same rights and privileges as the equivalent traditional shares, including dividend and voting rights. OKXICE is therefore proposing tokenized securities rather than synthetic trackers tied only to share prices.

OKXICE Plans 24/7 Trading Through Onchain Pools

The proposed venue would operate through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools deployed on XLayer rather than a conventional central-limit order book. Approved wallets would trade tokenized stocks against supported stablecoins, with the structure designed for 24/7 access and blockchain settlement. Moving stock trading into automated liquidity pools changes the execution infrastructure without removing securities-law requirements around ownership, access and market integrity.

The project is moving under the five-year tokenized-stock exemption introduced by the SEC, which temporarily exempts qualifying venues from the Exchange Act definition of an exchange under tightly defined conditions. Tier 1 venues are limited to 75 symbols and trading in each security cannot exceed 0.25% of the underlying stock’s prior-month average daily share volume. The exemption is therefore a controlled regulatory sandbox rather than authorization for unrestricted onchain equity trading.

Issuer rights remain another constraint. When an unaffiliated third party tokenizes a company’s shares, the underlying issuer must receive notice and an opportunity to object before trading begins. Separately, a TSV must publish its operating notice at least 30 calendar days before launch. The filing starts a regulatory process rather than marking the beginning of live OKXICE trading, and no commercial launch date has yet been established.

The proposal also arrives as U.S. markets examine longer equity trading hours more broadly. The SEC has already been reviewing infrastructure for near-continuous stock trading, including clearing, surveillance and resiliency requirements. Tokenization adds another layer to that discussion because settlement, custody and shareholder records must remain synchronized even when blockchain markets continue operating outside traditional exchange sessions.

ICE Partnership Moves From Investment to Infrastructure

OKX and ICE had already established a strategic relationship before forming OKXICE. ICE invested in OKX at a reported $25 billion valuation in March, gaining a board seat and setting out plans to work on regulated digital-asset and tokenized-market infrastructure. The new venue turns that broader relationship into a specific market-structure project combining OKX’s blockchain systems with ICE’s experience in regulated financial markets.

OKX has separately expanded institutional links between traditional assets and crypto trading, including support for BlackRock’s BUIDL as collateral for eligible institutional clients. The proposed stock venue goes further by targeting legally recognized equity ownership rather than merely using tokenized funds inside an existing trading account. That distinction makes shareholder rights, issuer objections and regulatory reconciliation central to whether the model can scale.

For now, OKXICE has established its intended structure and entered the SEC’s notification process, but it has not launched the 63-stock market. The meaningful test will come once eligible shares begin trading and regulators can measure liquidity, price formation, settlement performance and interaction with the conventional U.S. equity market.