A historic step for Wall Street: on Wednesday, shares in JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Circle, among others, were tokenized and traded for the first time, in a pilot involving more than 30 firms through clearing house DTCC. Ondo Finance and Talos are among the key players involved.
Wall Street has entered a new chapter in the history of tokenization. A range of major stocks and funds were tokenized and traded for the first time on Wednesday, through one of the world's most central financial institutions.
Behind the trades is the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, better known as DTCC. The company is the central link for post-trade processing in the U.S. market, where nearly all stock and bond trades are reconciled, cleared, and settled.
On Wednesday, DTCC confirmed it had begun the first limited production trades involving tokenized financial assets, a step toward the full launch of the service in October. According to the company, this is the broadest tokenization initiative to date, measured by number of use cases, asset classes, and participants.
The SEC gave the green light seven months ago through what is known as a No-Action Letter. The approval grants subsidiary Depository Trust Company a three-year authorization to tokenize select, highly liquid securities on pre-approved blockchains.
JPMorgan has tokenized part of its exposure to the Nasdaq 100 fund QQQ at DTCC, while retaining the ability to convert the positions back into traditional shares.
In addition, shares in Microsoft, stablecoin issuer Circle, the large index fund SPY (which tracks the S&P 500), and a short-term Treasury bond fund from iShares are among the first securities being converted into tokens.
Wednesday's trades covered several different use cases: collateral pledging, securities lending, settlement of Treasury and repo trades, ordinary equity trades, direct transfer of equity tokens between parties, and margin flows at a central counterparty. The transactions were carried out over several hours and were designed to reflect real-world use cases, according to DTCC.
The tokens are recorded on blockchain infrastructure at the clearing house and made available for trading. Conversions took place on both Hyperledger Besu, DTCC's own private network, and the public network Canton — a deliberate multi-chain strategy meant to ensure robustness, scalability, and flexibility.
Hyperledger Besu is, incidentally, the same technology Norway's central bank, Norges Bank, used when it tested central bank digital currency in its sandbox in 2022–23, although the bank concluded in December 2025 that there is no immediate need for a digital Norwegian krone.
What sets DTCC's solution apart from earlier tokenization attempts is that the tokenized shares are not simply a digital wrapper tracking the price of the underlying stock. Instead, the tokens are meant to be directly interchangeable with the traditional shares, carrying the same ownership, dividend, and voting rights.
"DTCC has demonstrated that we can apply the same institutional rigor to tokenization that we do for traditional assets, while continuing to safeguard the integrity and resilience of the global financial markets," DTCC CEO Frank La Salla says in a press release.
Brian Steele, who leads the company's clearing and securities services, pointed to real-time collateral mobility, strengthened liquidity and capital efficiency, reduced counterparty risk, and better interoperability between traditional and digital ecosystems.
Nadine Chakar, who leads DTCC's digital assets business, said the safest path to decentralization runs through established financial market infrastructure.
Tokenization firm Ondo Finance is among the participants DTCC itself confirms took part in Wednesday's production trades. The company says it has launched tokenized stock representations based on rights tokenized directly at DTCC, tied to securities it already holds in its traditional custody account.
Specifically, this covers shares in Circle and the SPY fund. The DTCC-tokenized entitlements act as digital twins of the securities underlying Ondo's own products, CRCLon and SPYon.
Securities held at DTCC can now be converted between traditional and tokenized form, which Ondo says provides greater flexibility and access to new liquidity. According to the company, this can in turn enhance the utility of its own products across exchanges, digital wallets, and DeFi platforms worldwide.
Ondo CEO Ian De Bode says the company expects to play a leading role in bringing tokenized securities on-chain for investors as the market matures, he writes on LinkedIn.
More than 30 firms took part directly in Wednesday's production trades, a group spanning traditional financial institutions to digital market players. Participants include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, exchanges Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, Circle, Microsoft, Invesco, Citadel Securities, CME Group, Societe Generale, Tradeweb, Virtu Financial, Chainlink, Fireblocks, and Digital Asset Holdings — the company behind Canton Network.
The industry working group that developed the service has grown to more than 100 members and partners.
Trading technology firm Talos provided the trading and settlement infrastructure behind two of the pilot's concrete use cases: an equity trade and a U.S. Treasury trade. The company connected counterparties and enabled on-chain workflows throughout the entire trade lifecycle, with participation from prime brokers.
"These initial trades are an important milestone for the industry because we're able to demonstrate that DTCC assets can be tokenized, represented on-chain, traded between multiple institutions with the participation of prime brokers, and settled on-chain — the entire end-to-end life cycle of a trade," Talos CEO and co-founder Anton Katz writes on LinkedIn. Other firms that took part alongside Talos in their respective use cases include BitGo, Digital Asset, DriveWealth, Flow Traders, and Marex.
Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas commented that he is moving "a little more toward a tokenized future," but stressed that the shift won't happen overnight. He added, however, that DTCC's step is a significant one.
Interest in tokenization has grown sharply as financial firms explore how traditional securities can be moved on-chain, a shift that could enable round-the-clock trading and faster settlement. Some industry players have simultaneously called for stricter regulatory safeguards.
By comparison, DTCC's subsidiaries processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025, while custody subsidiary Depository Trust Company held securities from more than 150 countries in custody and asset servicing, worth a combined $114 trillion.
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