OKX and NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange plan a round-the-clock blockchain market for tokenized U.S. stocks, naming more than 60 securities including Nvidia, Tesla and Apple in a regulatory filing. Each token would be backed one-for-one by a real share and traded against stablecoins through blockchain liquidity pools instead of a traditional order book. Analysts see limited near-term demand given corporate objections and temporary regulatory relief.
Crypto exchange OKX and NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange plan to launch a market where more than 60 U.S. stocks trade onchain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A regulatory filing from the joint venture, OKXICE, lists Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet among the securities it plans to offer in tokenized form, alongside crypto-linked companies Coinbase, Circle, Robinhood, Strategy and Securitize.
How the tokens would work
Each stock token would be backed one-for-one by an underlying share held by a registered broker-dealer, so one Nvidia token represents one Nvidia share. Token holders would keep the economic and shareholder rights that come with the stock, including dividends and voting rights. But inclusion in the filing doesn't guarantee a stock will actually trade — companies get a 30-day window to object, and Cerebras has already objected to having its shares included.
Rather than paying in dollars, investors would buy and sell the tokens using stablecoins — OKXICE plans to support USDC, USDT and USDG. There is no order book matching buyers with sellers; instead, stock tokens and stablecoins sit in blockchain-based liquidity pools that investors trade against, with buying pushing a token's price higher and selling pushing it lower. The trades would run on XLayer, a blockchain OKX built, using plumbing from decentralized exchange Uniswap.
Doubts over near-term demand
According to TD Securities: "No symbol is a given." The bank still sees limited near-term relevance for institutional investors, pointing to weak interest from companies in tokenization and uncertainty around the regulatory framework. The SEC relief behind the venture lasts five years rather than setting permanent rules, which could make large firms reluctant to connect their systems to a market whose legal footing may later shift.
The bigger test, TD Securities said, will be whether enough investors and trading firms show up to keep onchain prices aligned with the real stocks, particularly overnight and on weekends when U.S. exchanges are shut. Harvey Li, founder of Tokenization Insight, argued the venue could still become one of the first real tests of which tokenization model can scale U.S. equities onchain the fastest and become the dominant market structure.
Source: CoinDesk
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