Walmart Blocks Its Stock From OKX-ICE Tokenized Trading Venue
In brief
- Walmart, Eli Lilly, Cigna Group, Carnival and Arcos Dorados joined the list of companies objecting to OKXICE TSV, according to its Oct. 28 notice.
- The total has climbed from nine on Oct. 15 to 38, broadening the pushback into retail, health care and travel.
- Under the SEC’s innovation exemption, a timely objection bars the venue from listing a third-party tokenized version of a company’s stock.
The world’s largest retailer is now keeping its shares off OKX and ICE’s planned tokenized stock venue.
Walmart, Eli Lilly, Cigna Group, Carnival, and Arcos Dorados have objected to having their shares offered on OKXICE TSV, according to an updated notice from the venue dated Wednesday. The five additions bring the total to 38 companies.
That’s up from 33 a day earlier, when JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola and Dell were among seven newcomers. The tally has more than quadrupled since the venue’s first list of nine objectors on Oct. 15. It grew to 16 on Oct. 19, with names including Microsoft, and 22 on Oct. 23 when Wells Fargo joined the list.
The latest batch broadens the pushback beyond tech and finance into retail, health care, and travel. Arcos Dorados, the largest McDonald’s franchisee in Latin America, joins McDonald’s itself, which objected earlier this month. Eli Lilly and Cigna join UnitedHealth Group and Moderna among the health care companies on the list.
The objections carry real weight. Under the SEC’s innovation exemption, which the agency unveiled in September after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate, a venue must notify a company before offering a version of its shares tokenized by an unaffiliated third party.
If the company objects in writing within 30 days, the venue can’t make that stock available for trading, according to the SEC’s order. The objection applies only to that venue, and the notices don’t disclose the companies’ reasons.
→OKXICE TSV, a 50-50 joint venture between NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange and OKX’s U.S. holding company, plans to let approved users trade tokenized U.S. stocks around the clock. OKX and ICE first teamed up on tokenized securities earlier this year before announcing the 24/7 venue this month.
Trades would run through permissioned Uniswap v4 pools on OKX’s XLayer blockchain, paired with stablecoins such as USDC. The exemption caps the venue at 75 of the largest, most liquid stocks, with trading limited to 0.25% of each stock’s average daily volume, and up to 250 other stocks at 2.5%.
The list may not be finished. Under the SEC’s order, companies have 30 days from receiving notice to object, and some of the market’s most heavily traded names, including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and Amazon, haven’t done so.
The venue has also said it can list shares tokenized by the issuers themselves, which would give companies direct control over how their stock appears onchain, though the notices don’t identify any such listings.
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