Solana (SOL) Co-Founder Yakovenko Says Firms Blocking Tokenized Stocks Should Go Private

33 Issuers Stand Against OKXICE

Solana (SOL) co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has told U.S. public corporations that oppose on-chain trading of their shares to leave public markets entirely. His argument is that a company cannot claim the advantages of a listing while rejecting the way its equity increasingly trades, and the warning lands on the group driving the current standoff: about 33 major issuers have drawn a line against tokenized stock trading on OKXICE, the joint venture between OKX and Intercontinental Exchange. The objectors span banks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, alongside Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Dell, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and CoreWeave. The conflict plays out inside a framework the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) built for exactly this test. The SEC's Innovation Exemption Order, enacted in September, formally requires tokenized securities venues to give advance notice to unaffiliated issuers, who then hold a 30-day window to file a written objection to trading on a specific platform. That process is documented in the venue's public notice for its tokenized securities venue. Tokenization itself does not change an issuer's market cap; it changes where, and at what hours, an existing share can change hands. Dave Hendricks, chief executive of the SEC-registered digital transfer agent Vertalo, reads the objection wave as evidence the guardrails function as designed: the 30-day window was engineered to preserve issuer agency, and corporations are exercising that right. The exemption runs five years and does not eliminate every regulatory requirement, but its objection mechanism is the binding constraint. Even when investors want a company's tokenized shares, a venue cannot list them under this framework if the issuer objects, which makes issuer consent the largest obstacle any platform faces in listing U.S. equities.

The objections have split industry participants on the cause. Mirza Uddin, chief operating officer of Injective, argues that firms like Goldman Sachs and Microsoft weigh a token outside their control, one trading around the clock with ambiguous voting rights, as more risk than reward. ClearStreet analyst Owen Lau expects adoption to arrive eventually, since tokenization offers an expanded investor base, continuous access and an added distribution channel, and he identifies beaten-down stocks with thin trading volume as the strongest candidates. Carlos Domingo, chief executive of tokenization firm Securitize, treats the issuers' caution as reasonable, noting that corporations naturally weigh pricing, investor protection and shareholder rights in markets this new, and he points to issuer-sponsored participation as an option many have not considered. OKXICE itself frames the opt-outs as routine: co-chairman Andrew Cuomo has said the venue anticipated that many companies would watch and wait while the initiative matured. The field is widening beyond one venue as well, with TSV LLC and Perpetuals.com both filing notices of intent to launch tokenized securities venues under the same exemption. Investor behavior is moving faster than issuer consent. Tokenized equity trading volume on Robinhood Chain grew from $526 million in July to $2.21 billion in August and then to $11.31 billion in September, a more than twentyfold rise over three months. Non-crypto markets accounted for 36.5% of Hyperliquid's perpetuals volume in the quarter, up from 32.7% the prior quarter, and tokenized stocks were the fastest-growing asset category on Solana (SOL).

The standoff reads less as a verdict on tokenization than as issuers using a mechanism the SEC designed for this purpose, while the market answers on its own. Volume on Robinhood Chain did not stall at the first objection wave; it multiplied through September. For market makers and venues, the objection right now defines the addressable universe of U.S. equities, while demand builds in the venues and asset categories that already trade without it. The decisive variable is education: whether venues can show issuers, through issuer-sponsored structures or clearer shareholder-rights design, that tokenization adds distribution without ceding control. Until then, growth continues outside the United States while the regulatory debate matures.