DTCC assembles a working group to develop its new tokenization service

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) received a No-Action Letter from the SEC last year, clearing it to operate a tokenization service for three years.

DTCC is building its tokenization service with a working group of over 50 major financial firms, including digital asset issuers, brokerages, banks and many more. 

What is the DTCC planning to launch, and with whom?

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), through its subsidiary The Depository Trust Company (DTC), is building a tokenization service. The project officially left the planning phase today as the participant list and specific launch dates were publicly released.

Currently, DTC custodies over $114 trillion in assets. The new service aims to convert these real-world, DTC-custodied assets into digital tokens while preserving the same entitlements, investor protections, and ownership rights as traditional holdings. 

The DTCC has formed an Industry Working Group comprising more than 50 firms including asset Managers & Banks like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, State Street, Wells Fargo, UBS, and BNP Paribas, Market Infrastructure like NYSE Group, Nasdaq, Citi, and Broadridge (NYSE: BR), Digital Asset Natives including Circle, Ondo Finance, Fireblocks, Anchorage Digital, and Payward (parent company of Kraken), and Brokerages & Trading companies like Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD), Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities. 

Specific partners like Ondo Finance, the largest tokenizer of stocks and ETFs, have been brought into the DTCC working group to help design the standards for these markets, in order to ensure that the U.S. remains in the lead regarding global financial digitization. 

DTCC President and CEO Frank La Salla stated that tokenization will significantly change how markets work and operate, “bringing new levels of liquidity, transparency and efficiency to investors.”

According to the official announcement, DTCC plans to facilitate the initial, limited production trades of tokenized assets in July 2026, while the full commercial launch of the service is slated for October 2026. 

DTC received a No-Action Letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the initiative back in December last year. This authorization allows DTC to offer three years of tokenization services for major index ETFs, the Russell 1000 constituents, and U.S. Treasury bills, bonds, and notes.

What is happening in the tokenization market right now?

While DTCC builds its infrastructure, the institutional adoption of tokenized assets is increasing rapidly. Grayscale, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, reported that as of Q1 2026, the total market cap of tokenized assets reached $27.3 billion, representing a 245% increase year-over-year. 

Even traditional financial instruments like the tokenized U.S. Treasury market have exploded, surpassing $15 billion in total value. 

Another area to benefit from the industry’s momentum is repo (repurchase agreement) tokenization. Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR), a key participant in the DTCC working group, announced that their Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform processed an average of $368 billion in daily transactions during April 2026, representing a YoY growth of 268% and a nearly 4% increase from March 2026. 

Horacio Barakat, the Global Head of Digital Innovation at Broadridge, noted that the platform is “demonstrating how tokenization can operate at scale within core market infrastructure.” Broadridge also recently invested in HQLAX to improve digital collateral mobility. 

BlackRock, OKX, and Standard Chartered teamed up to launch a framework that allows institutional clients to post BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund as yield-bearing collateral while assets remain in regulated custody at Standard Chartered. This is the first time a bank as globally important as Standard Chartered acts as custodian.

Meanwhile, NYSE announced a parallel trading platform in January 2026, supporting 24/7 trading with stablecoin settlement. Nasdaq received SEC approval in March 2026 for tokenized securities trading.

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