DTCC protects more than $114 trillion in securities, making it one of the most important pieces of financial market infrastructure. Every day it records ownership and settles transactions in stocks, bonds and other securities. Instead of creating new digital assets, DTCC’s system turns existing securities into blockchain-based “digital twins” that retain the same legal ownership, dividends, and governance rights as the underlying assets.
That distinction separates DTCC’s approach from many tokenized equity offerings available today.
Some crypto platforms issue tokenized “wraps” that reflect the price of a stock, but do not necessarily provide investors with the legal rights associated with ownership of the underlying shares.
Instead, DTCC’s model allows institutions to convert existing securities between traditional electronic records and blockchain-based tokens without changing ownership.
“They are the ones who are moving from one settlement regime to another,” Mark Wendland, chief executive of Canton Strategic Holdings, said in an interview. “I cannot understate the importance of a company like DTC directing and conducting these real transactions, given the role they play in the American financial markets.”
Throughout the day, participants demonstrated various use cases. JPMorgan converted holdings of the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF into tokenized assets before using tokenized collateral to satisfy central counterparty margin requirements with CME Group. DTCC also processed tokenized Treasury transactions, equity trades, and collateral pledges, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, one of the world’s largest ETFs, was also tokenized during the event.
