Nvidia and Costco Join 50 Issuers Blocking OKXICE Stock Tokens

Fifty public companies have now told the tokenized stock venue run by Intercontinental Exchange and OKX not to trade their shares, according to a public notice dated Oct. 30.

The list stood at 38 in the venue's Oct. 28 notice, Unchained reported on Monday. The 12 new names include Nvidia, Costco, Nike, Micron, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks and Reddit. They sit beside earlier objectors such as Microsoft, Alphabet, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Walmart. The notice gives no reason for any objection, and it still lists no date for trading to begin.

How the opt-out works

The venue, OKXICE TSV, plans to let identity-checked wallets trade stock tokens against stablecoins in pools on OKX's XLayer network. The tokens are made by outside firms, not by the venue. Under the SEC exemptive order the venue relies on, a company that files a timely objection keeps its stock off the venue whenever an unaffiliated third party did the tokenizing, according to Unchained.

Who gets paid

Traders pay the venue a flat-rate service fee on each trade, plus a pool fee that goes to liquidity providers and a network fee for the blockchain, the notice says. It adds that no ICE or OKX affiliate will act as a liquidity provider for now.

What the notice warns

The venue says it is "not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission" for this activity. Its access-token contract "has been audited internally, but not by external auditors." If the broker-dealer behind a token failed, whether tokens held in a self-custody wallet would count as protected customer property "is uncertain."

The venue's own position is that its tokens are "not restricted to trading on OKXICE TSV," so other venues can support them if the tokenizer agrees and the SEC conditions are met.

In our opinion: Fifty refusals before a single trade tells you who holds the lever here, and it isn't the exchange. The SEC order gave issuers a veto over third-party tokens, and blue-chip names are using it while the rules are new. Watch the next notice for a launch date, and for the first big company that tokenizes its own shares instead of saying no.