ICE and OKX plan 24/7 tokenized stock venue on Uniswap

Intercontinental Exchange and crypto exchange OKX filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 4 to launch a Tokenized Securities Venue under the SEC’s Innovation Exemption. The filing was submitted by OKXICE, a 50-50 joint venture between ICE and OKX, and proposes an always-open market that would initially list 63 U.S. stocks, including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase and Circle.

The platform would run on OKX’s X Layer blockchain and use Uniswap v4 automated market maker liquidity pools to set prices. Tokenized shares would trade directly against stablecoins such as USDC, USDT and USDG. The filing states each token would be fully backed one-for-one by the underlying share and carry equivalent economic and governance rights, including dividends and voting.

Investors would hold tokens in self-custodial wallets. Access to the venue would require identity verification, anti-money-laundering and sanctions screening. After passing those checks, a non-transferable credential would allow a wallet to interact with the venue. The venue would not operate a traditional order book, take custody of customer assets, or extend credit.

Under the proposed design, executable prices come from the ratio of assets in AMM pools rather than a live feed from the NYSE or Nasdaq. Authorized participants would be able to mint or redeem tokens for underlying shares during regular U.S. trading hours, linking the onchain pools to the conventional equity market. When cash markets are closed, the AMM pools could continue repricing tokenized shares based on pool balances.

The SEC’s temporary Innovation Exemption imposes limits on the experiment. Venues in Tier 1 may list up to 75 symbols and trading in an individual security cannot exceed 0.25% of that security’s prior month average daily volume. Tier 2 allows up to 250 symbols and a 2.5% volume cap. A token that breaches its applicable threshold must halt trading for three months. The exemption remains in effect through Sept. 17, 2031, unless the SEC modifies it earlier.

The SEC requires at least 30 calendar days’ public notice before a venue may open. Given OKXICE filed on Oct. 4, the earliest feasible start date under the current notice requirement would be in early November. Third-party tokenizers must notify issuers at least 30 days before offering a tokenized share, and issuers may object to a listing during that window. Cerebras Systems has already filed an objection that prevents OKXICE from offering its tokenized shares under the current framework.

The filing notes that liquidity levels will affect how closely onchain prices align with cash-market values. Thin AMM pools can produce larger price movements and wider deviations from the underlying stock. Because arbitrageurs cannot immediately buy or sell the underlying shares when U.S. cash markets are closed, gaps between onchain and cash prices could persist until conventional trading resumes. The ability to mint and redeem tokens during cash hours is intended to provide a channel for arbitrage once markets reopen.

OKXICE co-chair and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo described the plan in the filing as “a landmark step toward a truly global, 24/7 Wall Street.” OKX founder and CEO Star Xu called the filing a “market-structure experiment worth testing at scale” and wrote, “Wall Street is moving onchain.”