SEC Lists Three Would-Be Tokenized Stock Venues, Including an OKX-ICE Venture
None of the three is trading yet, and the SEC says being listed is not approval. The notices still show how onchain US stock trading would work, and how small it has to start.
By Fueled Crypto Newsroom · AI-assisted · 4 min read
Three companies have told the Securities and Exchange Commission they plan to run onchain trading venues for tokenized US stocks. The agency posted their names on its Innovation Exemption page, which is dated Oct. 20 and was updated Oct. 21. Most of the conversation about it happened on Wednesday.
The three are TSV LLC, which notified the SEC on Sept. 23; OKXICE TSV, the joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, on Oct. 4; and Kephas Corporation, doing business as Perpetuals.com, on Oct. 14.
The SEC was careful about what the list means. Inclusion "does not mean that the person meets the definition of 'Tokenized Securities Venue'" or that it has met the exemption's conditions, the page says, and the staff "does not pass upon the merits or accuracy" of any venue's notice.
What the exemption allows, and the caps that come with it
The list exists because of the SEC's Sept. 17 "Innovation Exemption" order. It lets a tokenized securities venue (TSV) trade tokenized versions of exchange-listed stocks through permissioned automated market maker (AMM) pools without registering as an exchange. The relief is temporary and expires five years after publication.
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The conditions are the interesting part. A venue has to verify that each token gives holders the same rights as the underlying share. Its smart contracts must be public, auditable and deployed on a public, permissionless blockchain. Trading has to stop whenever the underlying stock halts on its listing exchange.
Then there are the size limits. The order splits stocks into two tiers. Tier 1 covers S&P 500 and Russell 1000 names and certain large exchange-traded products. In Tier 1, a venue can trade at most 75 symbols and no more than 0.25% of a stock's average daily share volume from the prior month. Tier 2 stocks are capped at 250 symbols and 2.5%.
A venue has to post a public notice at least 30 calendar days before it starts operating. In FAQs published Oct. 20, SEC staff said a venue should publish that notice only once its operations and access standards "are established and ready for production." The staff noted the FAQs have no legal force.
Three venues, three different chains
Each firm's notice lays out a different setup:
TSV LLC is a Puerto Rico company building on the Canton Network. Its notice says tokenized stocks will trade against USDC and Brale's SBC stablecoin, with a baseline swap fee of 0.30%: 0.20% to liquidity providers and 0.10% to the venue. Its site says operations have not started.
OKXICE TSV is run by OKXICE LLC, a Texas company owned 50/50 by ICE and OKC USA Holding Inc., according to its Oct. 8 notice. It plans to use Uniswap v4 pools on X Layer, OKX's network, with a custom "hook" that admits only wallets holding a soulbound access token. Stocks would pair with USDC, USDG or USDT. The notice says the venue will serve "retail and institutional investors" and will not hold participants' assets. OKX's page lists revised versions dated Oct. 15 and Oct. 19.
Perpetuals.com's venue would run on Kronos X Public, an Ethereum-compatible Layer 2 developed within the Perpetuals.com group. Pools would initially pair stocks with "a form of USDC," according to its notice page, which also says trading has not begun.
OKX has been promoting the venture since it filed. On Oct. 7, three days after the submission date on the SEC's list, the company framed it this way:
The conversation has moved from if to how.
OKXICE is building the market infrastructure for our 24/7 financial future. https://t.co/BBMN0MvcS2
None of the three has announced a start date. According to Finance Magnates, TSV LLC's notice says trading won't begin before the 31st calendar day after publication, which would be Oct. 24 if counted from the first version. Both Finance Magnates and Bitcoin Magazine report that none of them is live yet. The SEC is still taking public comment on the order under File No. 4-927.
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