Wells Fargo, Arm and Intuit Object to Tokenized Shares on OKXICE

The list of companies refusing to let their shares trade as tokens on OKXICE has grown to 22. Six more issuers, including Wells Fargo, Arm Holdings and Intuit, have objected to having their stock tokenized on the planned platform, according to a regulatory document reviewed by Reuters on Friday. The count stood at 16 earlier this week.

OKXICE is backed by crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. The document does not say why the companies objected. A Wells Fargo spokesperson declined to comment to Reuters, while representatives for Arm and Intuit did not immediately respond.

How the objection mechanism works

OKX and ICE plan to offer tokenized versions of 63 stocks. They filed with the SEC on October 5 to launch under the commission's new five year innovation exemption, a framework the SEC introduced in September. It allows eligible platforms to trade tokenized stocks without meeting certain requirements imposed on traditional exchanges, but issuers must be notified before their shares are tokenized and can block a listing by objecting.

Companies that objected earlier include Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, Caterpillar, McDonald's and Western Digital, as listed in an October 19 regulatory update. Broadcom, Verizon, UnitedHealth, CoreWeave, Rocket Lab, AppLovin, Cerebras Systems, Applied Digital and Applied Optoelectronics have also objected.

The proposed design

The tokens would be backed by actual shares held through a registered broker-dealer and would carry dividend and voting rights. They would trade in permissioned Uniswap v4 pools on OKX's X Layer network, settled in stablecoins.

Cuomo: opposition is expected

Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who serves as OKXICE co-chair, has framed the pushback as predictable. Speaking at an October 20 press conference, he called it a "very natural response" and described the framework as a limited experiment, with caps on both the number of participating companies and trading volumes.

He also argued that early movers will emerge:

"There'll be other companies that say: I want to be the first in the pool,"

Andrew Cuomo, OKXICE co-chair

What it means

The objections apply to this venue. They do not necessarily signal opposition to tokenizing stocks in general, and companies may simply be wary of how their shares are represented and traded on a platform they do not control. The regulatory document does not establish their motives.

Nasdaq has taken a related but distinct line. It supports tokenization in principle but has warned that insufficient safeguards could fragment liquidity and undermine price discovery.

The broader lesson may be that regulatory permission and working technology are not, on their own, enough to bring corporate America along. With 22 issuers now opting out, the notification and objection right is complicating plans for a 63-stock launch.