OKX and ICE joint venture launches round-the-clock trading of tokenized stocks on November 23. The OKX exchange and ICE, the owner of the NYSE, will list more than 70 securities. Among them are common and preferred shares of Strategy, Coinbase, Circle and 59 Direxion exchange-traded funds.
What a tokenized security is. It is a record on a blockchain that grants the right to a real share. The holder receives dividends, voting rights and corporate actions.
Why this matters to a trader. The 24/7 mode means trading without exchange sessions and weekends. 67 companies declined to participate, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and Tesla.
Who is on the list?
- Strategy - common and preferred shares.
- Coinbase and Circle - crypto market securities.
- 59 Direxion funds - the manager oversees assets worth $70 billion.
- Robinhood, BitGo, Securitize and Better.com - are also on the list.
Why so many refusals?
There are already 67 refusals - this is data from a document dated November 5.
- The right to say "no". An issuer is given 30 calendar days to refuse if the tokenization is arranged by a party unaffiliated with it.
- Scale. Of the initial list of 62 companies, 56 objected, that is about 90%.
- Reason. Applied Optoelectronics explained its refusal by saying it does not understand how this will affect the price, liquidity and fluctuations of its shares.
How is trading structured?
The venue operates under a five-year innovation exemption from the SEC that appeared in September 2026. It permits trading of tokenized securities without registering as a regular exchange.
- The second such venue. The first opened in early November on the Canton blockchain.
- Uniswap v4 pools on the X Layer network - the trade is executed against an asset pool, without an order book. X Layer is OKX's Ethereum-based layer-2 network.
- Securitize provides tokenization: the securities are held in the client's own wallet, and the venue does not store the keys.
- Access will initially be granted only to US clients of OKX Inc. who have passed identity verification.
What does this mean for a trader?
Key point: not all 70-plus assets will appear on the first day, a venue representative warned. Only US clients of OKX Inc. with completed identity verification will be able to trade.
Check your list of instruments. The set of markets differs between programs, and choosing a challenge for your market is worth doing before paying.
What happens next?
Nasdaq criticizes the idea.
- John Zecca, Nasdaq's chief legal officer, wrote that the exemption takes such securities outside the regulated national market system.
- Nasdaq will remove its shares from such venues.
Are you planning to trade tokenized stocks?
A round-the-clock market without weekends looks tempting, but you trade under your prop firm's rules. Some offer only spot crypto and currency pairs, while others do not have tokenized securities in their list of instruments at all. And a trade from Saturday night to Sunday counts as a violation. The list of instruments and limits are visible before paying for the evaluation. Compare the conditions calmly before November 23 arrives.