OKXICE tokenized-stock opt-outs hit 22 as Wells Fargo and Cisco object

Wells Fargo, Cisco and four other companies objected to OKXICE's plan to offer blockchain-based trading of their shares, bringing total objections to 22, CoinDesk reported.

OKXICE, the joint venture of crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, filed the updated notice Friday naming Cisco, Wells Fargo, Arm Holdings, Moderna, Intuit and Marvell Technology. They join Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs and McDonald's on the objection list.

An objection removes the name only from OKXICE's venue, not from tokenization elsewhere. Venue rules give issuers 30 days to object before their shares can be offered, so a roster can shrink after a client has built exposure.

The 22 total is not a clean count of defections from the venture's original 62-name roster. Wells Fargo, Arm and Cerebras Systems were not on that roster; Cerebras Systems' objection was disclosed earlier. Cisco, Moderna, Intuit and Marvell were. No more than 19 of the 22 were on that initial selection.

Andrew Cuomo, the venture's co-chairman and a former New York governor, said on a press call Monday that the objections were expected. "We always anticipated that, because this is such a dramatic and revolutionary change, many companies would want to wait and see how it goes rather than be the first to participate," he said. He called the framework "a sandbox — a model demonstration," citing limits on participating companies and trading volumes.

The IMF put the tokenized real-world asset market at about $65 billion as of July 31, with tokenized stocks at roughly $2.3 billion of that.