OKX and ICE File to Trade 63 Stocks Onchain
Securitize launches share-backed stock tokens as stock perps outgrow the token market. Plus Arbitrum adopts USDG, Ether.fi launches its own dollar and the UK picks its digital gilt banks
Happy Friday. This is Converge, The Defiant's weekly recap of tokenization, stablecoins, and real-world assets, by Chris Storaker.
TOP NEWS THIS WEEK
- OKX and ICE file to trade 63 tokenized stocks onchain.
- Securitize launches tokens backed by shares
- Arbitrum adopts Paxos' USDG and Ether.fi launches its own dollar
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
- Community banks sue the OCC over crypto trust charters
- The UK names six banks to lead its first digital gilt
- Circle asks the EU to drop bank-deposit mandates for stablecoin reserves
- The CFTC opens a crypto rulebook and FinCEN drops its self-custody wallet rule
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OKX and ICE File to Trade 63 Tokenized Stocks Onchain
- OKXICE, the joint venture of OKX and NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange, filed on Oct. 4 to run a venue for 63 tokenized U.S. stocks under the SEC's Sept. 17 exemption. Four days later, Securitize launched tokens backed by shares of 12 stocks, including Apple, Nvidia and Tesla, on Solana.
The venue would trade the tokens against USDC, USDG or USDT in Uniswap v4 pools on X Layer, OKX's blockchain, open only to wallets OKXICE approves. An unnamed tokenizer holds the shares one for one through a registered broker-dealer. The exemption caps a venue at 75 large-cap stocks, at up to 0.25% of their average daily volume, and 250 smaller ones at 2.5%. Issuers can object: Cerebras, AppLovin, Applied Digital and Rocket Lab have, according to a revised notice dated Oct. 8.
- Securitize launches tokens backed by shares
Securitize sells through its broker-dealer to eligible investors in the U.S., the EU and other permitted markets. Each token is a claim on a share held by Securitize Markets, with the dividends and, where the share carries them, the votes. Trades settle in USDC around the clock on weekdays, with Jump Trading making the market. Holders become registered shareholders only if the company adopts tokenized shares itself. Securitize expects the tokens to trade on OKXICE and the NYSE's planned digital venue, neither of which is live.
The leverage went to perps
Tokenized stocks were worth $3.17 billion on Sept. 28, up from $639 million a year earlier, according to a report by oracle provider RedStone. Lending markets held 2.6% of that, $81 million, as collateral. Stock perps on decentralized exchanges held $3.3 billion of open positions the same day, more than the whole token market. On Hyperliquid's trade.xyz, perps on the S&P 500, Nvidia and Tesla traded 7 to 13 times the volume of the matching xStocks tokens in September.
A perp gives a trader five times Nvidia exposure in one transaction, at any hour. Building the same position from a token means buying it, posting it in a lending market and borrowing against a price feed that stops when Nasdaq closes. Binance began accepting four of its stock tokens as margin collateral on Oct. 7, and values them at the last U.S. close until markets reopen.
In the U.S., Kalshi opened its US 500 perpetual on Oct. 6, a CFTC-regulated index future with no expiry and daily funding payments, for approved U.S. customers. In a letter dated Oct. 3, CFTC staff let exchanges remove the expiry dates from existing perpetual-style stock-index futures, such as Coinbase Derivatives' US500.
Our take: tokens are for owning, perps are for trading
The SEC exemption requires tokens that carry the same rights as the share. About 70% of tokenized stock value sits with Ondo, Binance's bStocks and xStocks, whose debt claims and certificates give holders no direct ownership, according to RedStone. Securitize's tokens, and those OKXICE will list, are claims on real shares, with dividends, votes and an asset a lender can take.
Those rights matter to an investor who holds a stock for months or borrows against it. A trader who wants leverage over a weekend has no use for them, and perps already serve that trader at a larger scale, now including Kalshi's. Share-backed tokens will grow if lenders and brokers accept them as collateral, which needs prices and redemptions that work while Nasdaq is closed.
Arbitrum and Ether.fi Claim the Reserve Income on Their Own Dollars
- Arbitrum made Paxos' USDG its ecosystem dollar on Oct. 6, and Ether.fi announced its own dollar the same day. In both cases the platform that holds the users collects the reserve income, a week after Open USD began sharing its reserve income with distributors.
Arbitrum joined Paxos' Global Dollar Network, which pays partners up to 100% of the returns on the reserves behind the USDG on their platforms, according to Paxos. Arbitrum will spend its share on USDG adoption and the teams integrating it. Morpho, GMX, Fluid, Maple and Kraken support the token at launch, and a DAO proposal asks for 100 million ARB, about $20 million, in incentives. Some of Arbitrum's most established protocols "have run on USDC for years," said Bhau Kotecha, co-founder of Paxos Labs, whose Transit service will convert their balances.
Ether.fi's dollar runs on Ethena's white-label service. Ethena handles reserves, minting, redemptions and compliance, and partners control the product and capture the economics, according to its documentation. Ether.fi holds more than $300 million of stablecoin balances, and its Cash card has nearly $1 billion of cumulative spending. Neither company disclosed the revenue split or the reserve mix.
Samsung Wallet will add USDC for eligible U.S. users in the last week of October, on 82 million compatible Galaxy devices, with transfers to crypto wallets and to bank accounts in more than 60 countries. Bastion runs the accounts and Coinbase holds the USDC. USDC is the default, and Bastion sells its service on the promise that clients keep "their brand, their users and their economics." Samsung disclosed no economics.
Others are applying to issue themselves. Rain, a card platform with more than 200 partners, applied on Oct. 5 for a national trust bank that could issue stablecoins for them. Agora won preliminary OCC approval for a trust bank to take over AUSD issuance from its Bermuda affiliate. On Oct. 1, Brazil's antitrust regulator published a filing for a stablecoin joint venture by Open USD's five founders, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase and Shopify, starting its review.
Our take: it’s a distributor market
Last week an issuer agreed to pay its distributors. This week the distributors had a choice: Arbitrum picked an issuer that would hand over the reserve income, Ether.fi hired one to run a dollar under its own name, Samsung hired Bastion to run USDC accounts in its wallet, and Rain and Agora want charters to issue directly. Paxos, Ethena, Bastion and Bridge now compete to run the dollar behind someone else's customers, for a fee.
A distributor that issues its own dollar gives up the liquidity of the one everyone already holds. USDC is accepted almost everywhere, which is why Samsung made it the default and Arbitrum needs incentives to move protocols off it. A wallet, card program or exchange whose users keep balances in its app can carry its own dollar. A platform without those balances does better taking a share of the reserve income on a widely held dollar.
OTHER STORIES WORTH YOUR TIME
Community Banks Sue the OCC Over Crypto Trust Charters
The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC on Oct. 2 to overturn the March 2026 rule and a 2021 letter that let national trust banks run crypto businesses beyond fiduciary services, and to cancel Protego's conditional charter. The suit asks the court to block new approvals that rely on those policies; it leaves other approvals, such as Ripple's, BitGo's and Paxos', in place. Rain's application and Agora's approval rely on the same chartering route.
Anchorage Digital Buys Routable to Add Corporate Payment Rails
Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank, bought Routable, a corporate bill-payment platform that covers more than 220 countries, and plans to build stablecoin and tokenized-deposit settlement into it over the coming quarters. Terms were not disclosed. The Information reported days earlier that Anchorage cut 17% of its staff.
The UK Names Six Banks to Lead Its First Digital Gilt
Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Morgan Stanley, NatWest and RBC Capital Markets will underwrite and distribute DIGIT, a short-dated government bond issued on HSBC Orion within the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox, with issuance expected by the first quarter of 2027. Investors will be able to hold it through LSEG's platform, and the Treasury plans to list it on the London Stock Exchange.
Centrifuge Confirms Three Tokenized Funds Are Live on Arc
Centrifuge's JAAA, JTRSY and HYB funds, covering AAA-rated CLOs, Treasury bills and high-yield bonds, now take USDC subscriptions on Circle's Arc blockchain. All three are open only to non-U.S. professional investors, and neither project has named an Arc lending market that accepts them.
Ripple and CSD BR Mirror BTG Pactual Fund Records on the XRP Ledger
Brazil's CSD BR began mirroring ownership records for BTG Pactual fund shares on the XRP Ledger with Ripple, so authorized participants can check the records in near real time. CSD BR's own systems remain the official record. The partners envision native issuance and trading later, with real-estate and agribusiness receivables under consideration.
ZKsync Opens Prividium's Core Code as the Bundesbank Tests It
Matter Labs released the access-control core of Prividium, its platform for permissioned chains, under the Apache 2.0 license, so institutions can run one from public code. Germany's Bundesbank has deployed Prividium on its own infrastructure for design and testing, with no production use named.
Solana Foundation Releases an Open-Source Settlement Program for Institutions
The Solana Foundation released an open-source delivery-versus-payment program on Oct. 6 that settles both legs of a trade in one transaction, so either both assets move or neither does. JPMorgan provided input on settlement practices, the foundation said. The program has no order book or identity checks, and the foundation is seeking early users ahead of a production release.
Circle Urges the EU to Drop Stablecoin Bank-Deposit Mandates
Circle asked the European Commission to replace MiCA's requirement that issuers hold 30% of reserves in bank deposits, 60% for significant tokens, with a liquidity requirement, arguing that the deposits add bank credit risk. The European central banks also want the fixed minimums gone, but would require set shares of reserves to mature within one and five working days and would tighten the limits on deposits with any one bank, which Circle wants removed. They also say MiCA needs new legislation before one token can be issued both inside and outside the EU, as USDC is today. The consultation closed Sept. 30.
The CFTC Opens a Crypto Rulebook That Leaves Spot Exchanges to the States
The CFTC's advance notice outlines an optional federal regime for crypto exchanges that offer retail customers leverage, with a new class of futures exchange built for them. Ordinary spot exchanges stay under state money-transmission law; Chairman Michael Selig said only Congress can require every crypto exchange to register. Comments are due 60 days after Federal Register publication.
Treasury Drops Its Self-Custody Wallet and Mixing Rules
FinCEN withdrew its 2020 proposal that would have required banks and exchanges to report and identify the counterparties behind self-custodied wallets for transfers above $10,000, and its 2023 proposal to treat crypto mixing as a primary money-laundering concern. It said it will take no further action on the wallet rule and may act on mixers in the future.
The Fed Asks Whether Bank Stablecoin Holdings Merit a Five or Ten Percent Risk Weight
In its GENIUS Act proposal, which Converge covered two weeks ago, the Fed asks whether banks' holdings of a stablecoin should carry a five or ten percent risk weight when the issuer holds almost nothing but reserves and keeps no more than 5% of them in uninsured deposits. Issuers with more uninsured deposits could get 20%, and those with significant other assets or liabilities, or no disclosures, 100%. Comments are due Nov. 30.
Conduit Sues Tether Over $2.76 Million in Frozen USDT
Conduit, a cross-border payments firm, sued Tether in New York federal court over roughly $2.76 million of USDT in its treasury wallet, frozen since September 2025 without explanation, it says. It wants access restored, damages, and the reserve income Tether earned on the frozen tokens.
Even more this week:
- Moody's rated Sky B3, a speculative grade, citing about $90 million of equity against $10 billion of assets.
- S&P Global launched letter grades for DeFi lending vaults, with each vault's grade limited by the score of the curator that runs it.
- Visa said business programs drive about 17% of its stablecoin-linked card volume, across more than 160 programs.
- Ondo unveiled tokenized notes tied to private companies, starting with an unnamed pre-IPO AI company, for non-U.S. investors.
- Plume opened a vault backed by Fidelity's Total Bond ETF, with credit and interest-rate risk passed to holders; terms are not yet out.
- Circle added Aave to bitcoin-backed USDC borrowing in Mint alongside Morpho, on Arc and Ethereum.
- Ledger launched wrapped-bitcoin loans through Morpho inside its wallet app.
- Circle, Ripple and SC Ventures backed OKX at $25 billion, the same valuation ICE paid in March.
- The SEC cleared 3x bitcoin and ether ETFs for Cboe, Volatility Shares' BITH and ETHK.
- Centrifuge holders voted 98.5% to allow an optional swap of CFG tokens for shares in Centrifuge, Inc., pending board approval and legal restructuring.
Converge is produced by The Defiant. This briefing is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
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