Morgan Stanley Begins Tokenizing Stocks and Treasuries

Morgan Stanley has begun tokenizing U.S. equities and Treasury securities through the Depository Trust Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) new Tokenization Service, making it one of the first banks to use the platform. The service launched on October 28 and enables eligible institutions to create blockchain-based representations of securities held in custody at the Depository Trust Company (DTC). The bank said it is using the service to tokenize the securities, but neither Morgan Stanley nor DTCC disclosed the number or value of assets involved. The move establishes the bank’s participation in an institutional tokenization platform; it does not, by itself, show the level of subsequent trading or investor demand. DTCC says the service allows eligible institutions to convert securities held at DTC into tokenized representations and transfer those representations to supported digital wallets. The tokens retain the original securities’ ownership rights, investor protections and economic entitlements, according to DTCC. The service initially operates on the Canton Network and DTCC’s private Besu network, with additional blockchain integrations planned for 2027. Morgan Stanley’s head of...