The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, today announced that it successfully converted assets held at The Depository Trust Company (DTC) into tokens that were then used in real production trades, a notable milestone that marks the largest tokenization production initiative in breadth of use cases, asset classes and number of participants.
The tokenized trades were processed on July 15 and marked a significant milestone that sets the stage for the DTCC Tokenization Service to launch in October 2026. More than 30 firms representing a cross-section of traditional financial institutions (TradFi) and digital market participants took part in the initiative, underscoring broad industry engagement, the capabilities of the DTCC Tokenization Service, DTCC’s critical role as a financial market infrastructure and the importance of interoperability. The digital conversions occurred on HyperLedger Besu (DTCC’s private network) and Canton (a public network). This is part of DTCC’s multi-chain strategy to ensure resiliency, scalability and choice.
The DTCC Tokenization Service enables the issuance of tokenized representations (also referred to as digital twins) of real-world assets that can be delivered to DTC Participant wallets of choice. The DTC-held securities can be converted between traditional and tokenized forms, allowing DTC Participants to access new liquidity pools and execute digital asset strategies with greater flexibility.
“DTCC demonstrated that we can apply the same institutional rigor to tokenization as we do for traditional assets while continuing to safeguard the integrity and resiliency of the global financial markets,” said Frank La Salla, President and CEO of DTCC. “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.”
The event featured several transactions made across various asset classes in a DTC production environment, including collateral pledge, security lending, U.S. Treasury/repo delivery-versus-payment (DVP) trade, equity DVP trade, equity delivery-versus-delivery (DVD) trade, equity token transfer and central counterparty (CCP) margin workflows.
The transactions using DTC-tokenized securities – conducted over the course of several hours – were designed and selected to reflect real-world use cases and validated the ability of DTCC’s Tokenization Service to provide the same resiliency, integrity, protections and operational rigor as traditional infrastructure.
Multiple market participant firms, blockchain networks, wallets, exchanges, issuers and applications participated, including Alpaca, BetaNXT, BitGo Bank & Trust, N.A., BlackRock, Blockdaemon, BNP Paribas Securities Corporation, Broadridge, Chainlink, Circle, Citadel Securities, CME Group, Digital Asset Holdings (creators of Canton Network), DriveWealth, DRW, Fireblocks, Flow Traders, FTSE Russell, Goldman Sachs, HIFI, Invesco, J.P. Morgan, Kaleido, Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LF Decentralized Trust), Marex, Microsoft, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange, Ondo Finance, Prometheum Capital, S&P Dow Jones Indices, Societe Generale, State Street Investment Management, Talos, Temple Digital Group, Tradeweb, Vanguard, Velocity Capital LLC and Virtu Financial, Inc.
“DTCC successfully showcased how tokenization can enable real-time collateral mobility, enhance liquidity and capital efficiency, reduce counterparty risk and support interoperability between traditional and digital ecosystems,” said Brian Steele, President of Clearing & Securities Services at DTCC. “Market participants will soon have the best of both worlds because DTC-tokenized assets maintain the same investor protections, entitlements and ownership rights as traditional securities, all while enabling greater efficiency, programmability and security.”
“Innovation requires collaboration. Because of DTCC’s role in global financial markets, we convened key industry participants to help us design the DTCC Tokenization Service,” said Nadine Chakar, Managing Director, Global Head of DTCC Digital Assets. “DTCC demonstrated that the safest, most direct path to decentralization runs through trusted financial market infrastructures and that legacy and Web3 ecosystems can coexist without disruption.”
This milestone comes seven months after DTC received a No-Action Letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), authorizing DTC to operate a tokenization service for real-world assets it custodies. The DTCC Tokenization Service was created in collaboration with the DTCC Industry Working Group, which has grown in recent months to more than 100 members and partners.