CoreWeave, Broadcom Object to Their Shares Tokenized on Blockchain

CoreWeave and Broadcom have objected to a request from OKXICE, a joint venture between crypto exchange OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, to list and trade their stocks on blockchain, joining a growing list of companies pushing back against crypto versions of their stocks.

The objections could signal a setback for the Trump administration’s push for tokenized stocks, which are crypto tokens that represent U.S. equities. Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an “innovation exemption” to allow trading venues to list such tokens if they are not objected by the issuer within 30 days of notice.

OKXICE was among the first companies filing with the SEC to launch a tokenized stock trading platform. It gave notices to more than 60 companies, including Apple, Nvidia, Tesla and others. So far, nine companies, including AppLovin, Verizon and UnitedHealth, have objected to the request, according to a public notice by OKXICE on Thursday.

Dan Gibbons, a partner at Latham & Watkins who co-leads the firm’s digital assets practice and advises companies on responding to requests to tokenize their stocks, said issuers “don’t want to do something new and scary without some incentives for them. What we’re seeing is a lot of hesitancy.”

“The groupthink around it is there isn’t a lot of certainty as to what the 24/7, 365-day trading market for a large cap public company common stock would look like in practice,” he said. One major concern for companies is price dislocations if trading volume for such tokens is low. That could put pressure on the price and provide the wrong signal to the larger market, said Stephen Wink, global co-chair of Latham’s fintech industry group.