Microsoft and Alphabet join growing list of companies opposing OKXICE tokenized equity initiative

Microsoft and Alphabet join growing list of companies opposing OKXICE tokenized equity initiative

The OKXICE platform, a collaborative tokenized equity venture between cryptocurrency exchange OKX and ICE, the company that owns the NYSE, has disclosed that it received 16 formal objection notices from corporations, with Alphabet and Microsoft among them.

An increasing number of corporations are submitting formal objections against the inclusion of tokenized representations of their equity securities on the proposed trading platform developed jointly by the Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, and OKX, a major cryptocurrency exchange.

Through an updated notification released on Monday, OKXICE, the collaborative enterprise formed by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and OKX, disclosed that it has received 16 formal issuer objection notices from various corporations, including Microsoft, Alphabet which serves as Google's parent entity, and Goldman Sachs. These objection notices did not contain detailed explanations for the companies' decisions to notify OKX, however an industry expert informed Cointelegraph that the concerns might stem from uncertainty about "not knowing what happens to their price" within the framework of the proposed trading platform.

In a conversation with Cointelegraph conducted on Tuesday, Andrew Cuomo, who serves as OKXICE co-chair and previously held the position of New York Governor, stated that these communications should not be classified as "objections," referencing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "opening up to a global 24/7 marketplace." His interpretation positioned these objections as resembling companies remaining poolside while allowing other organizations to dive in first and evaluate the viability of OKXICE's tokenized equity approach.

Cuomo added:

"There are going to be a lot of companies that say 'we don't want to be the first, we wanna see how it goes' [...] that is 100% to be expected, and there will be more."

Earlier this month when OKX and ICE submitted their application to the SEC, Cuomo announced that the planned tokenized equity trading platform would provide shares representing more than 60 companies that maintain listings on United States exchanges. Among the 62 companies initially proposed for the platform, approximately 25% have submitted formal objections.

Based on information provided by OKXICE, the proposed trading platform is designed to function continuously on a 24/7 basis utilizing permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools that would be deployed on XLayer. Every tokenized equity security would be matched with one among three approved payment stablecoins: Tether's USDt (USDT), Circle's USDC (USDC) or Global Dollar (USDG).