DTCC is taking its new blockchain-based tokenization service from pilot to commercial operation in October. The scope is 25 securities, including Treasuries, equities and ETFs, on Canton and Hyperledger Besu.
In July, DTCC, the central clearing and settlement body for the US securities market, ran its first real trades with tokenized securities. Shares in JPMorgan, Microsoft and Circle, among others, were converted and traded through a pilot program with more than 30 participants. The company is now taking the service further, from pilot to commercial operation, with a defined and fixed set of securities, aiming for ongoing operation going forward. These are no longer just one-off test trades. DTCC's depository, DTC, holds securities and ensures that settlement actually happens once trades are made; what's happening now is that some of these holdings get a parallel, transferable representation on blockchain.
The initial scope is 25 securities, including US Treasuries, equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Treasuries held in DTC custody come first. The tokens are meant to be directly interchangeable with the traditional securities, carrying the same ownership, dividend and voting rights. In other words, this isn't just a digital wrapper tracking the price of the underlying security.
In July, DTCC tested several concrete use cases: pledging collateral, securities lending, settlement of Treasury and repo trades, direct transfer of share tokens between parties, and margin calculation at a central counterparty. It's this functionality that is now being carried forward into the commercial service.
The service is launching on two networks: Canton and Hyperledger Besu. Canton is built for regulated institutions, with an architecture that lets two parties settle trades between themselves without other participants seeing the details. That's a requirement for banks that can't expose positions and client relationships. Hyperledger Besu is an enterprise variant of Ethereum technology, known in the Nordics from Norges Bank's 2022-23 sandbox trial with central bank digital currency.
The stablecoin network Stellar is expected to join the service in early 2027. Spreading the tokenization across multiple chains at once is a deliberate strategy on DTCC's part, but it also carries a coordination risk if the different networks aren't kept tightly enough in sync.
The legal foundation is a so-called no-action letter from the US financial regulator SEC, dated December 11, 2025. Such a letter is not a law or a formal approval, but an undertaking from the regulator not to pursue a carefully described practice. It applies only to the specific party and practice the letter describes.
The permission lasts for three years from when the service enters commercial operation. That means DTCC must have a lasting regulatory solution in place within that time if the tokenization is to continue in its current form.
The working group that developed the service counts more than 50 institutions and technology providers, among them BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). More than 30 of them took part directly in the July tests. Ripple Prime, the institutional arm of Ripple, is also part of the working group. DTCC stresses that this does not mean XRP Ledger has been chosen as part of the settlement infrastructure.
By comparison, DTCC's subsidiaries processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025, while its depository, DTC, held securities from more than 150 countries in custody and asset servicing worth a combined $114 trillion.
Sources: DeFiant, Yahoo Finance/CCN, TokenPost, CryptoTicker, Kaupr
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