Walmart joins OKX–ICE tokenized stock opt‑outs

Walmart (WMT), Eli Lilly (LLY), Cigna Group, Carnival (CCL) and Arcos Dorados have objected to their shares being listed on the planned OKX–ICE tokenized stock venue, preventing those stocks from trading on the platform. An updated public notice dated October 28 said the five companies joined a growing roster of issuers that have opted out of the initiative, bringing the total number of objectors to 38.

The new objections extend resistance to the venue across sectors including retail, health care and travel. Walmart is the world’s largest retailer by revenue, while Eli Lilly is a major pharmaceutical company, and Carnival (CCL) and Arcos Dorados operate in the cruise and restaurant franchise industries. Cigna adds another large health insurance name to the list of issuers that have decided not to allow unaffiliated tokenization of their stock on the venue at this stage.

With 38 companies objecting, more than 50% of the firms on the venture’s original roster have now declined to participate. One account places the share of objectors at 38 of 62 originally scheduled companies, while another cites 38 of 63 targeted companies, or roughly 60%. Earlier objectors include large technology and financial names such as Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Intel (INTC), Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), Goldman Sachs (GS), Wells Fargo (WFC), McDonald’s (MCD) and Verizon (VZ), as well as Coca‑Cola, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Dell (DELL) Technologies.

The number of objectors has risen rapidly from an initial group of nine identified earlier in October. Additions in recent days included JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Coca‑Cola and Dell (DELL), followed by the latest group headed by Walmart and Eli Lilly. The growing list narrows the range of equities that OKXICE can offer when it launches, even as some heavily traded companies such as Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) have not been identified as having objected.

The OKX–ICE tokenized stock venue operates under a five‑year Securities and Exchange Commission innovation exemption introduced in September. Under this framework, when an unaffiliated third party seeks to tokenize a company’s shares for trading on a qualifying venue, the venue must first notify the issuer. If the issuer objects in writing within 30 days, the venue cannot list that tokenized stock; if the issuer remains silent, trading can start and there is no mechanism in the framework to withdraw consent later.

The SEC order caps the venue’s activity at 75 of the largest, most liquid stocks, with trading in those limited to 0.25% of each stock’s average daily volume, and up to 250 additional stocks at 2.5% of average daily volume. Objections are venue‑specific and do not prevent companies from pursuing other tokenization arrangements, including issuer‑sponsored models that give issuers direct control over how their stock is represented onchain.

OKXICE is a 50‑50 joint venture between cryptocurrency exchange OKX’s U.S. holding company and Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. The venue aims to enable eligible users to trade tokenized versions of U.S. stocks around the clock, using stablecoins such as USDC. Trades would be executed through permissioned Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX’s X Layer blockchain, with tokens backed by actual shares held through registered broker‑dealers.

While OKXICE faces an increasingly limited pool of issuers willing to permit unaffiliated tokenization, an alternative approach is moving forward in parallel. Canton Strategic Holdings has said its shares will be listed on TSV LLC, a marketplace in the Canton ecosystem, using an issuer‑led tokenization model. That issuer‑sponsored structure avoids the 30‑day objection process that applies to unaffiliated third‑party tokenization under the SEC’s innovation exemption.