regulation
DTCC tokenization service goes live with 20 firms, 34 securities worth $30B
DTCC's tokenization service launched Oct 28 on Canton and Besu, with 20 banks and asset managers signed on and 34 Russell-1000 stocks, ETFs and Treasuries representing about $30B in market value.
DTCC turned on its tokenization service on Wednesday Oct 28, with 20 firms signed on and 34 eligible securities representing roughly $30 billion in market value, per a DTCC spokesperson cited by CoinDesk. The service runs on the Canton Network and DTCC's private Besu blockchain, converting securities already held at the Depository Trust Company (DTC) depository into tokens backed one-for-one. The commercial rollout follows a July 15, 2026 pilot on Canton that processed live production trades with ~30 firms (DTCC release: dtcc.com/news/2026/july/15).
What is live
- Chains: Canton Network and Hyperledger Besu, operated privately by DTCC. Tokens do not move between the two at launch.
- Assets: a defined set drawn from the Russell 1000, large ETFs, and U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds. 34 securities at service start.
- Backing: one-for-one against securities already held at DTC. Official ownership records stay with DTC; tokens represent a claim registered to a specific wallet.
- Mechanics: conversion runs during business hours with a target of 15 minutes or less per round-trip (securities → tokens or tokens → securities).
- Trading hours: tokens move 24/7 between registered wallets, subject to compliance restrictions.
- Scope limits at launch: onchain settlement and the use of these tokens as collateral are planned, not live.
The 20 firms
Named by CoinDesk: JPMorgan, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, Fidelity Investments, Citadel Securities, State Street, UBS. DTCC says 20 firms in total have signed agreements; the rest were not named in the piece. The July pilot had included participants reported by Coin Academy as spanning BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, Microsoft, Circle and State Street, so the live-service roster is a subset of a broader test cohort.
Numbers
| Live date | Oct 28, 2026 |
| Firms with signed agreements | 20 |
| Securities eligible | 34 |
| Market value represented | ~$30B |
| Depository total (reference) | >$114T held at DTC |
| Target convert time | ≤15 min |
| Citi 2030 forecast (cited) | $5.5T tokenized-securities market |
The ~$30B figure is the current cap on what Oct 28 participants can tokenize; it is the sum of the market value of the 34 eligible securities, not of tokens actually minted.
Regulatory basis
The service runs under a December 2025 SEC no-action letter that allows DTCC to tokenize a defined asset set for up to three years. The letter is what lets tokens remain legal claims on the underlying securities while they move around the clock on a permissioned chain.
2027 scope
DTCC said more chains and more products are on the 2027 roadmap:
- Stellar and Circle's Arc chain added to Canton + Besu.
- Broader corporate-action support (dividends, splits, voting flows represented onchain).
- Tools for settling with digital cash — a prerequisite for live DvP in tokens rather than paired T+1 settlement in traditional rails.
Frank La Salla, DTCC president and CEO, framed Oct 28 as "the culmination of years of work to bring tokenized securities into a regulated framework" and described the setup as "extending DTC's resiliency, governance and operational standards into digital markets."
What to watch
- First public volumes: DTCC has not committed to publishing per-token or per-firm flow data. The pilot period on Canton did not surface figures.
- Mint/burn mechanics under stress: whether the 15-minute convert target holds during corporate-action events (ex-div, pay dates on tokenized ETFs).
- Interop with Canton Network: the service runs on Canton but DTCC's own private Besu does not bridge to it at launch — a divergence from Canton's single-ledger pitch.
- Addition of Stellar and Arc in 2027: both chains have different privacy and asset-reference models; the integration shape will matter for whether tokens can be issued once and discovered across chains.
Context
Oct 28 extends the direction set by the SEC's December no-action letter and by Securitize adding Stellar, published the same day, and by the Janus Henderson JQQQ fund that went live on Stellar this week. DTCC's service is the plumbing layer underneath: a central depository tokenizing already-held securities on bank-approved chains, rather than issuers tokenizing greenfield.
The limit of this launch is the one carried over from the pilot — tokens cannot yet post as collateral in the central systems, cannot settle onchain against digital cash, and cannot cross between Canton and Besu. DTC's existing book remains the record of ownership. Oct 28 is the start of the live phase, not the end state DTCC has described.