DTCC processed live tokenized securities trades using real assets, signaling that blockchain settlement is moving from pilots to production.
Wall Street's biggest blockchain experiment is no longer a pilot. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the institution behind the settlement of more than $114 trillion in securities, has completed its first live production trades involving tokenized securities.
The milestone shows that tokenization is moving beyond testing and closer to becoming part of everyday institutional finance.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which safeguards more than $114 trillion in securities and processes nearly every U.S. stock trade, has completed its largest production test for tokenized assets.
Unlike previous blockchain experiments conducted in isolated environments, this initiative involved real securities already held at The Depository Trust Company (DTC). Those assets were converted into blockchain-based "digital twins" before being used in live institutional transactions.
The production event included more than 30 financial institutions and technology providers, among them BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange, CME Group, Circle, Chainlink, State Street, Invesco, and Ondo Finance.
The live trades covered several institutional workflows, including equity transactions, U.S. Treasury repo trades, securities lending, collateral pledges, central counterparty margin transfers and tokenized asset transfers.
DTCC said the successful production exercise keeps its Tokenization Service on track for a broader launch in October 2026.
This milestone is significant because it moves tokenization beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations. In earlier testing, institutions mainly tested blockchain technology using simulated assets or isolated environments.
This time, participants executed transactions using securities that already existed inside DTCC's production infrastructure.
Instead of creating new blockchain native assets, DTCC converted traditional securities into tokenized representations that maintain the same ownership rights, investor protections, dividends, and governance privileges as the original assets.
Those digital twins can also be converted back into conventional electronic records whenever needed, allowing firms to move between traditional settlement systems and blockchain without changing legal ownership.
According to DTCC President and CEO Frank La Salla,
“The DTCC Tokenization Service will institutionalize tokenized markets on day one and will be a critical enabler of the digital ecosystem of the future, while reinforcing trust, safety and scale in a digital world.”
Three key things have changed over the years.
1. Regulatory Clarity
The SEC's No-Action Letter permitted DTC to operate a tokenization service using assets it already custodies. Without that approval, production deployment would have been difficult.
2. Institutions Want Collateral Mobility
This is probably the biggest reason, as Wall Street doesn't care about putting stocks "on blockchain." It cares about faster collateral transfers, intraday liquidity, lower settlement issues, and capital efficiency. That is exactly what this production test focused on.
3. Tokenization has Matured
Two years ago, most tokenization efforts focused on private funds and pilot projects. Today, major institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan, and DTCC are building real production infrastructure. And DTCC is responding to institutional demand rather than trying to create it.
Despite the successful production trades, DTCC stressed that this is not a full industry rollout.
The next major milestone arrives in October 2026, when DTCC plans to launch its Tokenization Service, allowing eligible participants to begin converting selected DTC-held securities into blockchain-based digital twins for production use.
If adoption expands, future phases could include broader collateral management, repo markets, and cross market settlement, gradually integrating blockchain into Wall Street's existing infrastructure rather than replacing it overnight.
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