OKXICE, the 50-50 joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), told the SEC on October 4 that it will operate a round-the-clock venue for tokenized U.S. equities under the agency's new Innovation Exemption, co-chair Andrew Cuomo disclosed Monday.

The notice lists more than 60 tokenized versions of U.S.-listed stocks, each priced against USDC, USDG or Tether's USDT. Named tickers include Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and SpaceX, alongside crypto-linked firms Coinbase, Circle, Strategy, Robinhood, BitGo and Securitize.

Cuomo, the former New York governor and attorney general who has worked with OKX since 2023, called the filing "a landmark step toward a truly global, 24/7 Wall Street."

What does the SEC's Innovation Exemption allow?

The exemption took effect September 17 and lets qualifying venues trade tokenized stocks without registering as national securities exchanges. The SEC does not approve entrants individually; a firm that meets the conditions notifies the agency and may operate under them.

Chair Paul Atkins said the agency was acting "within its statutory authority" when issuing the rule, which officials have described as a temporary bridge toward permanent rulemaking. The exemption followed Atkins's walk-back of a January timeline after pushback from Wall Street groups and arrived days after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate.

How will trading actually work?

OKXICE will route orders through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools deployed on XLayer, OKX's layer-2 blockchain. A custom smart contract will screen each transaction. Only wallets carrying a non-transferable soulbound token — issued after identity, anti-money-laundering and sanctions checks by OKX's U.S. entity — can trade or supply liquidity.

The notice warns that pool-set tokenized prices may diverge from the underlying shares, especially outside regular exchange hours.

The tokens themselves come from an unaffiliated third party, identified in the filing only as "the Tokenizer," which holds the corresponding shares one-for-one through a registered broker-dealer. Holders retain dividend and voting rights, according to the filing. OKXICE declined to name the issuer.

Why is Cerebras objecting?

The exemption permits third parties to tokenize a company's stock without its consent, but venues must notify the issuer and give it 30 days to object. If a company objects, its tokens cannot trade on the venue.

Chipmaker Cerebras Systems has already filed such a notice, the OKXICE filing says, and does not appear on the venue's published list. The objection highlights a structural tension: tokenized equity markets can list a company's shares before, or against, that company's wishes.

How does OKXICE fit into the broader structure?

ICE and OKX formed OKXICE in June, three months after ICE took a minority stake in OKX at a $25 billion valuation. The two had already brought crypto-native perpetual futures for oil to non-U.S. customers. In June, an OKX spokesperson told Fortune the venture would initially focus on tokenizing NYSE-listed equities, though Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft trade on the Nasdaq rather than the NYSE.

Chris Hayes, executive director of the Coalition for Tokenized Markets, told Crypto in America the exemption "could put DeFi trading platforms and liquidity pools in much more direct competition with traditional exchanges."

The OKXICE notice gives no launch date. With the SEC's exemption window now open and at least one issuer objection already on file, the next operational milestone is when the venue begins routing matched orders — and how issuers beyond Cerebras respond to being tokenized without their participation.