Cuomo Joins Push for 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading
Andrew Cuomo says tokenized stocks will bring 'radical change' to markets. The remarks were published by The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 9, 2026, positioning the former New York governor as the public policy face of a push to move U.S. stock trading onto blockchain infrastructure, the shared digital ledger that records ownership without a central bookkeeper.
The vehicle is OKXICE, a joint venture between OKX, described as a China-founded crypto company, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). OKXICE has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a tokenized trading platform, according to Reuters reporting on Oct. 5. The filing covers round-the-clock trading in 60 U.S. stocks, CoinDesk reported, with the venture planning to operate under the SEC's innovation exemption, a special permission to test new models, and offer 24/7 trading for tokenized U.S. stocks.
Cuomo signed on as co-chairman of OKXICE. He has advised OKX on U.S. strategy and regulation since 2023, a relationship that predates the joint venture and now places a former state executive inside a federally regulated market filing.
In support of the model, Cuomo said "blockchain, liquidity pools and smart contracts are a more efficient way to trade stocks," as reported by Yahoo Finance on Oct. 4. A liquidity pool is a shared pot of buy and sell orders, while smart contracts are software that carries out trades automatically. The goal is continuous trading. OKX and ICE plan 24/7 trading for tokenized U.S. stocks, removing the open and close that still define the regular stock session.
The broader context here is who is asking for permission. A crypto trading firm paired with an established exchange operator changes the regulatory conversation. It is not an offshore token wrapper seeking U.S. users. It is a domestic filing seeking exemptive relief for onshore trading of U.S. listed equities in token form. Scope matters. Sixty names is a controlled pilot universe, large enough to test price discovery and handling of corporate actions across sectors, small enough to contain surveillance and clearing complications.
Looking at what this means for market structure, the pressure points are familiar to people who run stock plumbing. Continuous trading weakens the importance of the close but spreads out liquidity. Liquidity pools and smart-contract execution imply a different system for matching and settling trades than a central limit order book with a clearinghouse guarantee, where one central marketplace matches orders and stands behind each trade. The open questions are quote continuity overnight, depth when primary-market participation thins, custody and beneficial ownership of the underlying share, handling of dividends, splits and votes, and fail and reversal procedures when finality is defined by chain state rather than depository book entry.
In my view, the efficiency claim should be treated as a hypothesis until the filing produces trading data savers and investors can check. Lower ticket friction does not automatically narrow effective spreads, the gap between buying and selling prices, or improve fill rates at size. Tokenization can reduce reconciliation steps and enable programmable settlement logic. It can also fragment order flow across venues with different speed, fee and market-maker obligations. For trading desks and issuers, the test will be whether a 24/7 token book trades at or through the primary quote, who carries overnight risk, and whether exemptive terms preserve investor protections around best execution, disclosure and market manipulation. Radical change, if it arrives, will show up first in those measurements rather than in the launch rhetoric.
