Wall Street's central depository starts turning stocks and Treasuries into tokens

The Depository Trust Company, which holds more than $114trn of securities for banks and brokers, switched on its tokenization service on 28 October. It sits at the centre of American stock and bond markets. Firms that use it can now turn shares, exchange-traded funds and Treasuries held there into tokens, digital records on a blockchain, and send them to wallets of their choice. The depository's parent, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), says each token keeps the ownership rights and investor protections of the security behind it. Twenty firms have signed up, among them JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, UBS, State Street and Citadel Securities.

These are not synthetic bets on a share price. Each token is backed one for one by a security held at the depository, which keeps the official record of who owns what. Ledger Insights, a trade publication, reports that when a token moves between registered wallets, that transfer is the settlement. There is no wait until the next business day, as there is for an ordinary share trade. Frank La Salla, DTCC's chief executive, said the firm was "establishing the foundation for responsible institutional adoption at scale".

The start is narrow. In December 2025 staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission, America's main markets regulator, cleared the depository to tokenize shares in the Russell 1000, an index of large American companies. Funds tracking major indices and Treasuries were cleared too. Only 34 securities are eligible at launch, according to both CoinDesk and Ledger Insights. Both also print a figure of $30trn, and they disagree on what it measures. CoinDesk, citing a DTCC spokesperson, puts it on the 34. Ledger Insights puts it on everything the regulator allowed. DTCC's announcement gives neither number.

Tokens can move at any hour, but only between registered wallets. Turning securities into tokens and back, or moving a token from one blockchain to another, happens only on business days. Ledger Insights gives the hours as 2am to 6pm New York time, so round-the-clock transfers stay on a single chain. Two blockchains are live: the Canton Network and a private ledger DTCC runs itself. More will follow in 2027, DTCC says. Both reports name Stellar and Arc, the blockchain built by the stablecoin issuer Circle, though the announcement names neither.

The bigger gap is cash. For now, how the money side of a trade is paid is left to the firms themselves. DTCC plans tools for paying with digital cash and for using the tokens as collateral for loans. It has previously told Ledger Insights it is exploring stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits for that job.

In July DTCC and more than 30 firms made the first limited live trades. Two big names are missing from the launch list. BNY, the largest custodian bank, has not signed. Nor has Goldman Sachs, which took part in the July trials, according to Ledger Insights. DTCC says more firms will join on a rolling basis.