DTCC Forms Industry Working Group for Tokenization Standards in US Capital Markets

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has taken a significant step towards integrating tokenization into US capital markets. The company has formed an industry working group to design common standards for representing, settling, and servicing real-world assets on permissioned and public blockchains.

The group brings together leading players from traditional finance and crypto, including Ondo Finance, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citadel Securities, the New York Stock Exchange, Circle, Fireblocks, and Robinhood. The working group's mandate is to ensure that tokenized instruments remain interoperable with existing post-trade infrastructure.

DTCC, which provides custody and settlement plumbing for nearly all US securities, oversees more than $100-$114 trillion in assets and processes roughly $3.7 quadrillion in transactions annually. The company's push towards tokenization comes after the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a no-action letter in late 2025, clearing DTCC's DTC subsidiary to operate a controlled tokenization service for DTC-custodied assets.

DTCC's president and CEO Frank La Salla has argued that tokenization will significantly change the way markets operate, bringing new levels of liquidity, transparency, and efficiency to investors. The initiative aims to bridge traditional finance and DeFi, allowing institutionally custodied equities and Treasuries to gain blockchain-native liquidity, programmability, and near-real-time settlement.