The DTCC Tokenization Service launched on October 28, 2026, turning a pilot into a production rail for tokenized securities inside the infrastructure that clears, settles and custodies most of the American stock and bond market. The Depository Trust Company, a subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, now allows eligible DTC participants to mint digital representations of securities already held at DTC.
These tokens carry the same ownership rights, investor protections and economic entitlements as the paper securities they represent. They also share the same CUSIP identifier, which allows a single liquidity pool to span traditional and on-chain markets. Frank La Salla, DTCC’s president and CEO, said the launch marks the culmination of years of work to bring tokenized securities into a regulated framework supported by trusted market infrastructure.
DTCC Tokenization Service Starts With a Deliberate Launch Set
The scale of the launch is narrower than the headline suggests, and that distinction matters. DTCC’s product site lists 34 securities eligible for tokenization at launch, a mix of large-cap Russell 1000 stocks, exchange-traded funds and US Treasury bills, notes and bonds. According to a DTCC spokesperson who spoke to CoinDesk, those securities represent roughly 30 trillion dollars in market value.
That figure should not be confused with DTC’s broader business. DTC holds more than 114 trillion dollars in assets under custody, while DTCC’s subsidiaries processed securities transactions valued at 4.7 quadrillion dollars in 2025. The 114 trillion dollar figure describes the existing custody business, not the value being tokenized on launch day.
Twenty DTC participants have signed agreements to access the service. They include Alpaca, Apex Clearing Corporation, Barclays, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Brown Brothers Harriman, Citadel Securities, Citi, Clear Street, DriveWealth, Edward Jones, Fidelity Investments, Interchange Clearing, J.P. Morgan, Marex, Mirae Asset Securities, Morgan Stanley, State Street, UBS and Velocity Capital. Future users are to be onboarded on a rolling basis.
Two absences are telling. BNY, the largest custodian, is not among the twenty, and Goldman Sachs, which took part in July live trials, has not signed. The service was built with input from more than 150 firms in the DTC Digital Assets Solutions Industry Working Group.
Regulatory Backing and Live Network Deployments
The regulatory foundation is a No-Action Letter the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued to DTC in December 2025. That authorization permits tokenization of Russell 1000 constituents, exchange-traded funds tracking major indices and US Treasury securities.
Roughly seven months later, DTCC and more than 30 firms completed initial limited-production trades and multiple on-chain transactions. BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard and the New York Stock Exchange were among the participants. Those activities ran across the Canton Network and DTCC’s private Besu infrastructure, and both networks remain the live deployments at launch. Additional blockchain networks are planned for 2027.
Stellar is the first public blockchain integration. DTCC and the Stellar Development Foundation announced the connection in May, targeting the first half of 2027 for DTC-tokenized assets to appear on the network. At the Meridian 2026 conference, DTCC Digital Assets head Nadine Chakar joined Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon to discuss the plan, saying the company set out the parameters it needs in a chain and Stellar met them with flying colors.
Circle Internet’s Arc blockchain is also on the 2027 roadmap, alongside broader corporate-action support and tools for settling transactions with digital cash. Also on October 28, Securitize announced plans to add Stellar as its 17th supported blockchain for issuing and managing regulated assets, though the company did not identify a launch date or specific financial products.
How Settlement Works and Where the Limits Apply
The mechanics of daily operation carry their own constraints. Eligible firms can convert securities into tokens during business hours, and DTCC is targeting processing times of 15 minutes or less. Once tokenized, assets can move between registered wallets around the clock, subject to compliance restrictions.
A tokenized position moving between registered wallets is itself the settlement, so there is no T-plus-one wait. Cross-chain movement is different. It runs through DTC’s conversion service from 2am to 6pm Eastern on business days, so round-the-clock transfers are intrachain only. Official ownership records stay with DTC even as tokens move, which is the structural difference between these tokens and synthetic stock tokens that track share prices without granting ownership of the underlying securities.
DTCC also convened a broader ecosystem of market participants, wallet providers and technology firms. Collaborators include BitGo Bank & Trust, Blockdaemon, Broadridge, DFNS, DRW, Fireblocks, Kaleido, Matter Labs, Ondo, Prometheum Capital, Talos, Taurus, Temple Digital Group, Tradeweb and Virtu.
What Comes Next for Tokenized Securities
Analysts at Citi projected that tokenized securities will become a 5.5 trillion dollar market by 2030. Other market operators are moving in the same direction, with Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange developing tokenized securities trading infrastructure and Intercontinental Exchange set to operate a blockchain-based trading venue with crypto exchange OKX under the SEC’s innovation exemption. DTCC’s global trade repository processes more than 25 billion messages annually.
Brian Steele, managing director and president of Clearing & Securities Services at DTCC, said the breadth of engagement across traditional finance and digital asset markets demonstrates that the industry is ready to move beyond experimentation and toward practical adoption. The distinction is that this is a production service with defined eligible assets, named participants, operating windows and live networks, not an open-ended experiment. Whether the DTCC Tokenization Service widens beyond its 34 eligible securities, and whether Stellar and Arc landings in 2027 convert the pilot into real settlement volume, will decide how much the DTCC Tokenization Service actually moves market structure.
The remaining questions center on scale and timing. How quickly firms convert eligible positions, which securities join the list, and how many additional networks come online will determine whether the rails become routine. For now, the DTCC Tokenization Service is operational with 34 eligible securities and 20 signed participants, and its next phase depends on execution during 2027.