The Depository Trust Company, a subsidiary of US central depository DTCC that holds securities worth more than $114 trillion, launched its DTCC Tokenization Service on 28 October. The service creates digital, one-to-one backed twins of securities already held at DTC, carrying the same ownership rights and protections as the original. At launch, 34 securities are eligible, including Russell 1000 stocks, ETFs and US Treasuries. Twenty participants have already signed up, including JPMorgan, Citi, Morgan Stanley, UBS and State Street, supported by the Canton network and DTCC's private Besu network.

What it means: DTCC is the infrastructure behind almost every US stock trade, so its move into tokenisation gives the technology a legitimacy it lacked until now, very different from start-up experiments. The difference from many crypto products is that here the token stays inside the regulated system, carrying the same ownership rights as the classic security, so the legal status does not change, only the way it is transferred and settled. The goal is for securities to move around the clock, without waiting for traditional systems' trading hours. For Greek financial institutions and asset managers, this does not change anything immediately, since it currently covers US securities and large institutions. It is worth watching, though, because if the service expands to more securities and networks in 2027, as announced, it will affect how institutional investors settle trades internationally, and possibly the infrastructure Greek banks and brokers will need to support to transact with those clients.

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