Table of Contents
DTCC announced on May 4 that DTC plans to facilitate initial limited production trades of real-world assets tokenised through its new tokenisation service in July 2026, with a planned full launch in October 2026. The service covers DTC-custodied assets intended to carry the same entitlements, investor protections and ownership rights as assets held in traditional form. More than 50 financial firms have been convened through a DTCC Industry Working Group to shape the operating model, including BlackRock, Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, NYSE Group, Franklin Templeton, Circle, Fireblocks, Digital Asset, Ondo Finance, Robinhood, State Street and Wells Fargo. The announcement did not identify a specific real-estate asset, REIT, mortgage instrument or property fund as part of the initial scope.
The SEC no-action letter defines the regulatory basis and operational constraints
The regulatory basis is a December 2025 SEC Division of Trading and Markets no-action letter addressing DTC's operation of the preliminary version of the service. Under the model, eligible DTC Participants can instruct DTC to tokenise eligible securities credited to their accounts: DTC debits those securities, credits them to a Digital Omnibus Account and mints a token representing the participant's security entitlement. Tokenised entitlements are transferable only between registered wallets of DTC Participants, and registered ownership remains in the name of Cede & Co. DTC would not assign collateral or settlement value to tokenised entitlements for purposes of a participant's Net Debit Cap or Collateral Monitor. The SEC staff position is time-limited and withdraws three years after DTC launches the preliminary base version. Eligible-asset categories for the preliminary service are limited to highly liquid securities: Russell 1000 constituents, U.S. Treasury bills, bonds and notes, and ETFs tracking major indices such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100.
The service builds on DTCC's existing digital-asset infrastructure
DTCC describes the tokenised and traditional versions as sharing the same CUSIP, with supported networks currently including DTCC's AppChain and Canton. DTC-issued tokens incorporate controls including mint, burn, force transfer, clawback, pause, freeze and unfreeze functions. The development follows DTCC's December 2025 partnership with Digital Asset to tokenise a subset of DTC-custodied U.S. Treasury securities on Canton Network, and builds on DTCC's acquisition of Securrency — later renamed DTCC Digital Assets — and its ComposerX digital-asset lifecycle management suite. The announcement does not yet identify the first production participants, first securities to be tokenised, the final approved blockchain list, the full fee schedule, or any real-estate-specific use case. In practice, it creates a defined path for eligible DTC Participants to convert supported assets between traditional book-entry and tokenised forms within DTC's controlled framework — but the service is not live until the July production trades begin.
