Morgan Stanley tokenizes US stocks and Treasurys through the DTCC's week-old service, but pushes its own tokenized-stock trading to early 2027

Morgan Stanley said it has tokenized US equities and Treasurys through the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation's new tokenization service, making it one of the first banks to do so, The Block reports. The service opened on October 28, according to crypto.news, with 20 participating institutions, including JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Fidelity Investments, State Street and UBS.

The service lets eligible firms create blockchain versions of securities held at DTCC's depository, which has more than $114 trillion in custody, and convert them back, crypto.news reports. That figure is everything the depository holds, not the amount tokenized. The service initially runs on the Canton Network and DTCC's private Besu blockchain.

Amy Oldenburg, the bank's head of digital assets strategy, said the hands-on work of connecting tokenized securities to established market infrastructure will inform the firm's digital asset plans.

The bank's own trading timetable has slipped, though. Morgan Stanley now expects to support tokenized equities on its alternative trading system in the first quarter of 2027, later than its earlier target of the second half of 2026, The Block says. That service has not launched and is separate from the DTCC work.

The move comes as the New York Stock Exchange lines up transfer agents for its own planned tokenized-stock venue, which still needs regulatory approval and has no launch date, according to crypto.news.