Wall Street is tokenizing stocks: what has actually happened

A bank that uses shares as collateral. An exchange that wants to be open day and night. A clearing house that lets securities move as tokens. Tokenization is no longer an idea that banks watch from the outside. The existing market infrastructure is building it itself.

I list what companies and regulators have said themselves. I have no expectations of my own. Where others have expectations, I name them.

What tokenization is

With tokenization a right to a share, bond or fund is recorded as a token on a blockchain. It can be one of two things. Either the existing security itself is registered digitally, or a separate token is issued that tracks the price. That difference matters for everything that follows.

DTCC: the biggest step

According to Cointelegraph, DTCC holds securities worth 114 trillion dollars. In December 2025 it received permission from the SEC, through a no action letter, to offer tokenization services for three years on pre approved blockchains.

On 15 July 2026 DTCC reported its first live trades. Existing securities held at DTC were turned into tokens and used for collateral, securities lending, repo and margin. It worked on Besu, a private network run by DTCC, and on Canton, a public network. More than 30 firms took part, among them BlackRock, Citadel Securities, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Nasdaq, NYSE and Vanguard.

The service itself is scheduled for October 2026. I could not find confirmation that it has started. According to DTCC the tokens keep the same rights as the regular security. Russell 1000 stocks, ETFs and US Treasuries come first. SEC commissioner Hester Peirce called the programme "a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain", but also "a pilot subject to various operational limitations".

Nasdaq and NYSE

The SEC approved a Nasdaq pilot on 18 March 2026, Cointelegraph reported the next day. Tokenized and regular versions of a share trade on the same order book, with the same ticker, price and rights. It covers Russell 1000 stocks and ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. It runs together with DTC. No start date was given.

NYSE announced on 19 January 2026 a platform for trading stocks and ETFs around the clock, with fractional shares, immediate settlement and funding with stablecoins. It needs regulatory approval. No timeline is given. Its parent ICE is also working with BNY and Citi on tokenized deposits for its clearing houses.

Bonds and funds

The tokenized market is mostly government bonds. For the end of the first quarter of 2026 BlockEden cites a market of 19.3 billion dollars in tokenized real world assets, of which roughly 13 billion in US Treasuries. BlackRock's BUIDL fund, launched on Ethereum in March 2024, had nearly 3 billion dollars according to the same source. Tokenized stocks were worth about 1.21 billion dollars according to RWA.xyz, as cited by Cointelegraph. That is small next to the rest.

JPMorgan announced a tokenized money market fund on 15 December 2025, the My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), on Ethereum. It is a private placement for qualified investors.

In Europe, Clearstream and Euroclear are building a joint data standard, according to Ledger Insights, to digitize the 14 trillion euro eurobond market, with digital issuance as a goal from the first quarter of 2026. Clearstream itself holds about 20 trillion euros. Digitizing is a first step and not yet tokenization.

Where it gets stuck

• Ownership. A token that is the share itself differs from a token that is a claim on an issuer. According to Ledger Insights, products such as xStocks and Ondo GM do not give full ownership rights, while DTCC's tokenized securities do. For investors that difference is hard to see.
• Supervision. ESMA warned in September 2025 that investors do not always know they are not buying a share. According to PaymentsJournal, the World Federation of Exchanges pointed out that tokenized US stocks are often offered through unregulated brokers and crypto platforms, with possible effects on liquidity, pricing and market integrity.
• Approvals. The DTCC service runs on a temporary SEC permission of three years. For NYSE there is no approval date.
• Networks. DTCC used both a private and a public network. How these will work with others later is not described.
• Payment. NYSE and DTCC are thinking about settlement with stablecoins, although Ledger Insights calls that a later possibility for DTCC. That puts stablecoins in the middle of the stock market, with all the questions about reserves and supervision that come with them.

What this is not

This is news and context. What companies expect from tokenization, such as lower costs and faster settlement, are their own expectations and not a forecast from BitFox. It is not advice to invest in tokenized products.

Sources

• DTCC: tokenization in practice, 15 July 2026
• Cointelegraph: DTCC eyes October for tokenized securities
• Ledger Insights: DTCC shares tokenization launch date
• Cointelegraph: SEC approves Nasdaq pilot, 19 March 2026
• The Block: NYSE builds tokenized securities platform, 19 January 2026
• BlockEden: RWA tokenization 19.3 billion, 13 May 2026
• Ledger Insights: Clearstream and Euroclear digitize eurobonds
• PaymentsJournal: ESMA on tokenized stocks, 2 September 2025