The DTCC protects more than $114 trillion in securities, making it one of the most important elements of financial markets infrastructure. Every day it records ownership and settles transactions in stocks, bonds and other securities. Rather than creating new digital assets, DTCC’s system converts existing securities into blockchain-based “digital twins” that retain the same legal ownership, dividend and governance rights as the underlying assets.
This distinction sets DTCC’s approach apart from the many tokenized equity offerings available today.
Some crypto platforms issue tokenized “wrappers” that reflect the price of a stock but do not necessarily provide investors with the legal rights associated with ownership of the underlying stocks.
Rather, the DTCC model allows institutions to convert existing securities between traditional electronic records and blockchain-based tokens without changing ownership.
“They are the ones moving from one colonization regime to another,” Mark Wendland, CEO of Canton Strategic Holdings, said in an interview. “I cannot understate the importance of a company like DTC driving and executing these real-world transactions given the role it plays in the U.S. financial markets.”
Throughout the day, participants demonstrated several 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 handled tokenized Treasury transactions, equity transactions and collateral, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, one of the largest ETFs in the world, was also tokenized at the event.
