The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is pushing for U.S. stocks to be listed and traded on cryptocurrency trading platforms, but this move has encountered resistance from some companies.
CoreWeave and Broadcom (Broadcom) have expressed opposition to the application submitted by OKXICE. OKXICE is a joint venture established between the crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE); this entity hopes to list the stocks of both companies on the blockchain for trading. An increasing number of companies are beginning to resist the launch of crypto token versions of their own stocks, and CoreWeave as well as Broadcom have also joined this trend.
The opposition from companies could become a setback for the Trump administration's efforts to advance tokenized stock policies. Tokenized stocks are digital tokens that represent equity assets in the United States. Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued new regulations allowing trading platforms to list such tokens, provided that the stock issuers do not raise any objections within 30 days of receiving notification.
OKXICE is one of the first institutions to submit an application to SEC for planning to launch a tokenized stock trading platform. This institution has sent notifications to more than 60 companies, including Apple, NVIDIA, and Tesla. According to a document made public by OKXICE on Thursday, as of now, nine companies such as AppLovin, Verizon, and UnitedHealth have opposed this application.
Dan Gibbons, a partner at Ruisheng Law Firm ( Latham & Watkins ), is the co-responsible person for the firm's digital assets business, providing consulting services to enterprises regarding requests related to stock tokenization. He stated, "In the absence of an incentive mechanism, issuers are not willing to try such novel approaches that carry unknown risks. What we are seeing now is a general attitude of wait-and-see."
"There is a consensus in the industry that the main market for common stocks operates 24/7, 365 days a year without any holidays, but there is great uncertainty regarding the actual operational effectiveness," he said.
Stephen Wink, the Global Chairman of RuiSheng Law Firm's Fintech Business, stated that a major concern for companies is that if the trading volume of such tokens is low, it can lead to price discrepancies. This will put pressure on the token prices and send the wrong signals to the broader traditional markets at the same time.
