10-29-2026 
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TL;DR: 33 of the 63 companies OKXICE wanted to tokenize have opted out, including Adobe, IBM, Intel, Oracle, and JPMorgan, with a week left in the SEC window. Tokenization is expected to continue anyway: Robinhood continues to tokenize abroad, and DTCC’s Tokenization Service is live.
Key Takeaways:
- OKXICE was rejected by over half of the companies whose shares it wanted to tokenize—33 of 63 had opted out as of October 27, up from 22 on October 23.
- The tokenization train has left the station. Miles Jennings says legal pathways exist to bring securities on-chain without the issuer’s consent.
- Robinhood keeps tokenizing abroad. It added eight tokenized stocks for international customers, but still doesn’t offer them in the U.S.
- DTCC Tokenization Service goes live with 34 securities and 20 clients, including JPMorgan and Citadel.
Brief History about OKICE: OKXICE is a 50-50 joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange. It notified the SEC of plans to tokenize 63 NYSE-listed stocks under the agency’s five-year innovation exemption, issued September 17. Nine companies had objected by October 17, and the count reached 33 by October 27.
OKXICE Timeline:
- September 17: The SEC issues a five-year innovation exemption letting tokenized securities venues operate without registering as exchanges.
- October 4: OKXICE notifies the SEC of its plan to operate a Tokenized Securities Venue, initially covering 63 U.S.-listed stocks.
- October 15: Nine companies, including CoreWeave, Broadcom, and Verizon, have objected.
- October 23: 22 of 63 companies have opted out of OKICE.
- October 27: 33 have opted out, including Adobe, AMD, IBM, Intel, and Oracle.
America’s first regulated tokenized securities venue (TSV) might not have any products to offer consumers if companies continue rejecting this tokenization invitation.
On October 23, OKXICE, the joint venture of digital asset exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange Holdings (NYSE: ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), revealed that 22 of the 63 public companies whose shares it wanted to tokenize had exercised their ‘opt out’ rights in accordance with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) guidelines.
As of October 27, that list of refuseniks has grown to 33, with the latest 11 including familiar faces such as Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), Dell Technologies (NASDAQ: DELL), International Business Machines (NASDAQ: IBM), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) and a few others. Just for fun, JPMorgan Chase (NASDAQ: JPM) and the Coca-Cola Company (NASDAQ: KO) decided to tag along.
Bear in mind that there’s still roughly a week to go in the SEC’s mandated 30-day window in which the remaining 30 companies on OKXICE’s wish list can issue similar ‘thanks, but no thanks’ edicts. Given that the rate of these objections is accelerating as the deadline draws closer, it remains to be seen whether anyone is interested in participating in this tokenization experiment.
As always, neither OKXICE nor any of the companies provided reasons for the skittishness, but the uncertainty about what might happen when stock trading goes 24/7/365 is clearly getting to stock issuers. And while consumers might benefit from extended trading hours, companies appear skeptical that there’s much in it for them.
This weekend, the Common Sense Leadership Fund (CSLF) took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal featuring a warning for public company CEOs: “YOUR STOCK. THEIR TOKENS. YOUR PROBLEM.” The ad cited several potential downsides of tokenization and urged CEOs to “respond promptly” to TSV notices announcing plans to tokenize their shares. The ad even features a Princess Leia-worthy plea that ‘this is your only chance.’
CSLF is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that describes itself as a conservative group that advocates for “real, positive, impactful policies that promote individual freedom, lower taxes and less regulation.” CSLF’s president is Kevin McLaughlin, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
While the ad’s QR code takes you to the parent company of the NASDAQ exchange, which in September warned of the risks of participating in this experiment, at least one digital sleuth believes they’ve followed CSLF’s money trail back to Ken Griffin, head of Citadel Securities. Citadel has long opposed tokenized securities unless the companies doing the tokenizing are subject to the same rules as their tradfi counterparts.
Nothing to see here
Miles Jennings, head of policy at the Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) (NASDAQ: ZADIHX) venture capital group’s a16z Frontier fund—formerly ‘a16z crypto’, before the bloom fell off that digital asset rose and necessitated a rebrand—tweeted that the number of companies uninterested in having their shares tokenized by a third-party platform “isn’t surprising.” Jennings said the incentives are “weak,” given that “trading occurs on US venues rather than in new global markets, so there’s no net new demand.”
But Jennings, who was commenting when the list of refusals numbered 26, claimed, “Issuer objections aren’t going to stop this train. There are many legal pathways to bring securities onchain that don’t require consent and that aren’t subject to the SEC’s jurisdiction. Someone could even build a permissionless protocol that does so.”
Jennings urged the SEC to “create an approach for tokenization that delivers the full benefits of on-chain markets—atomic settlement, 24/7 trading, global liquidity, etc. Supporting permissionless trading of securities through DeFi (decentralized finance) systems would accomplish that goal, and doing so would create the incentives for issuers that the innovation exemption lacks.”
The SEC opened these floodgates in September when it announced details of its TSV plan, with chairman Paul Atkins basically admitting that this was an experiment with uncertain outcomes. At this stage, it seems unlikely that the regulator will take any short-term action to revise its approach, so much will depend on what transpires when OKXICE’s diminished roster of tokenized shares goes live.
Two other TSV hopefuls have filed their applications with the SEC, although neither of these has yet to release aspirational lists of their tokenization targets.
Robinhood still only golf-clapping SEC tokenization plan from afar
The Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) trading platform has led the way in tokenizing public companies, although it’s shied away from offering these products to customers stateside (or Canada, the U.K., Switzerland…). On Tuesday, Robinhood announced eight new tokenized stocks were available to the platform’s international customers, including OKXICE objector JPMorgan Chase.
Robinhood was one of the few crypto platforms to criticize the SEC’s tokenization plans, expressing dismay over aspects such as volume limitations, requirements that tokenized shares offer full voting rights, and the opt-out clause. Robinhood execs have even publicly mocked U.S. public companies that objected to Robinhood tokenizing their shares without their permission.
On his company’s Q3 earnings call on Tuesday, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was asked about the tokenized shares it offers to international customers and whether there were plans to bring those ‘onshore.’ Tenev said Robinhood has “demonstrated the technology and the capability, so it’s just a question of getting all the regulatory stuff in place.”
Referring directly to the SEC’s tokenization moves, Tenev struck a somewhat less skeptical tone than in the past, saying “I think it’s a really positive step. We’re supportive of it. We think that obviously the U.S. needs to be a leader in this new technology.”
But Tenev alluded to the fact that SEC rulemaking lacks the permanence of legislation approved by Congress, saying “I do think more needs to be done to give people a little bit of certainty, because as we talk to customers, I think the uncertainty of what happens in five years is likely to be an impediment to putting serious assets onto this technology. I still think some rulemaking or legislation is going to be necessary.”
DTCC Tokenization Service is go
Finally, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), America’s leading clearing, settlement and trade reporting financial infrastructure firm, has just gone live with its DTTC Tokenization Service (DTS). The product (FAQ here) is being offered by DTCC subsidiary The Depository Trust Company (DTC).
DTS enables minting of tokenized real-world assets held at DTC, allowing the conversion and deployment of assets across both traditional and digital environments with a common liquidity pool. In keeping with the SEC’s tokenization guidelines, DTC-tokenized securities retain the same ownership rights, investor protections, and economic entitlements as the real thing.
Among the traditional assets that can be tokenized are select Russell 1000 equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking major indices, and U.S. Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. The SEC issued a ‘no action’ letter to DTCC last December, giving it a three-year window in which to test its wings.
For the moment, DTS is integrated with the privacy-focused Canton Network and DTCC’s private Besu network, but additional blockchains are tipped to join this party next year. (TSV LLC, one of the SEC’s TSV applicants, also plans to run on Canton.) Among the blockchains ‘anticipated’ to launch next year are Stellar and the Arc network recently launched by USDC stablecoin issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL).
DTCC has been exploring tokenization options for years, and DTS has been developed based on feedback from the DTC Digital Assets Solutions Industry Working Group, a body comprising over 150 firms from both the tradfi and digital asset sectors.
DTS is pledging 34 securities ‘available to tokenize’ at launch and has already signed 20 clients, including many familiar Wall Street faces, such as JPMorgan and Citadel. Seems Ken Griffin isn’t entirely against tokenization after all.
FAQs:
How many companies have opted out of OKXICE tokenization?
33 of 63 as of October 27, including Adobe, AMD, Dell, IBM, Intel, Oracle, JPMorgan, and Coca-Cola.
Why are companies opting out of tokenized shares?
None has said. Uncertainty over 24/7 trading is likely a factor, and a16z’s Miles Jennings says issuer incentives are weak because trading creates no net new demand.
Can U.S. investors buy tokenized stocks on Robinhood?
Not yet. Robinhood offers them only to international customers. CEO Vlad Tenev says bringing them onshore depends on regulatory approvals.
What is the DTCC Tokenization Service?
A DTC-run service that mints tokenized versions of assets held at DTC. They keep the same ownership rights and investor protections as the originals. 34 securities are available at launch.
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