OKXICE Proposes 24/7 Venue for 63 Tokenized U.S. Stocks

OKXICE LLC has proposed a venue for U.S. investors to trade 63 tokenized National Market System stocks around the clock through permissioned liquidity pools on XLayer.

OKXICE LLC submitted its proposed Tokenized Securities Venue notice to the SEC on Oct. 4. The 50-50 joint venture between Intercontinental Exchange Holdings and OKC USA Holding would use Uniswap v4 automated market-maker pools instead of a conventional order book.

The proposed lineup includes stocks linked to NVIDIA Corporation, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Tesla Inc., Coinbase Global Inc., Circle Internet Group Inc., Reddit Inc., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Securitize Corp. The 63 securities are U.S. National Market System stocks, not a confirmed list of NYSE-listed shares.

Each tokenized stock would be paired with USDC, USDG or USDT. Trading and liquidity provision would be limited to wallets that pass identity, anti-money-laundering, sanctions and wallet screening. Approved wallets would receive a non-transferable soulbound token authorizing trading and liquidity actions.

The venue would not custody customer assets, extend credit, conduct primary offerings or use a traditional order book. When a third-party tokenizer is involved, each tokenized stock would be backed one-for-one by an underlying share held through an SEC-registered, FINRA-member broker-dealer.

The plan would attach dividend, voting, issuer-interest and liquidation entitlements to the tokenized shares. Cerebras Systems Inc. had objected to its inclusion as of Oct. 4.

The proposal follows the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s Sept. 17 temporary Innovation Exemption for certain venues trading tokenized NMS stocks. The framework provides five years of conditional relief from the definitions of “exchange” for qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues and “dealer” for certain liquidity providers.

The exemption sets limits on symbols and trading volume, requires equivalent holder rights and auditable public smart contracts, and requires trading to stop when the underlying stock’s primary listing exchange halts trading.

“The Innovation Exemption, while temporary, would allow TSVs to trade tokenized NMS stock in a permissioned environment today while the Commission considers the need for additional action to facilitate onchain trading,” SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins said.

Jamie Selway, director of the SEC Division of Trading and Markets, called the approval of exemptive relief “an important milestone.”

OKXICE’s proposed 24/7 market for tokenized U.S. stocks remains a plan. The proposal contains no launch date, and the final stock lineup remains unannounced.