U.S. securities settlement institution Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has launched a securities tokenisation service in the live market for assets including Microsoft shares and U.S. Treasuries.

CoinPost, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Tuesday local time that the launch is a production phase moving real assets rather than a test simulation environment.

The eligible assets were narrowed to Microsoft shares, shares of crypto-related company Circle Internet Group, Invesco QQQ Trust, State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, iShares 0-3 Month U.S. Treasury Bond exchange-traded fund and U.S. Treasuries of various maturities. DTCC plans to limit the scope to about 1,000 instruments to avoid unintended risks or market disruption, run a pilot in July and expand to full availability around October.

The service was developed by DTC, a depository under DTCC. Participating institutions will use tokenised assets for purposes including collateral transfers, repurchase agreement transactions and stock trades. Settlement is processed by choosing either DTCC's private blockchain Hyperledger Besu or the Canton Network, a privacy-focused blockchain led by financial institutions.

About 40 financial institutions and technology providers, including JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard and the New York Stock Exchange, took part in the pilot. DTCC has previously conducted technology and operational verification in custody, asset management, securities, exchanges and digital asset infrastructure through an industry working group involving more than 50 companies.

Securities tokenisation methods broadly fall into 2 categories. One is a structure that issues tokens tracking the price movement of an underlying asset. This method can be traded by anyone but does not grant the same legal ownership or voting rights as shareholders. By contrast, DTCC's approach designs tokens to be compatible with actual shares, granting the same dividend rights, voting rights and legal ownership. Distribution is limited to approved financial institutions.

The legal basis for the service is a no-action letter issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December 2025. The SEC granted DTC authority for 3 years to provide tokenisation services to participating institutions and their customers. Eligible assets were also limited to highly liquid assets, including Russell 1000 constituents, major index-linked ETFs and U.S. Treasuries.

DTCC emphasised that the key focus in this rollout is the link to existing market infrastructure rather than the technology experiment itself. DTCC said it chose to start with a controllable asset group rather than widening the scope at an early stage, given that it holds more than $114 trillion in custodial assets and has about 1.4 million securities identification numbers in circulation.

DTCC President and Chief Executive Officer Frank La Salla (프랭크 라살라) said asset tokenisation and the use of digital blockchains are megatrends. He pointed to ensuring system safety and resilience, and to using new technology to unlock trapped liquidity, as areas of the company's focus. As a result, the limited rollout is proceeding as a first step beyond a simple pilot, linking tokenised assets to real trading and collateral operations within existing securities settlement infrastructure.

Once full availability begins in October, the scope of eligible tokenised assets and participation could widen. But because the current stage is limited to highly liquid assets and transactions among approved institutions, regulatory boundaries and market stability safeguards remained key variables in the expansion process.

DTCC successfully processed production trades using DTC-custodied tokenized assets in a live tokenized environment, marking a major milestone for digital markets ahead of the DTCC Tokenization Service launch later this year. Read more: https://t.co/ermexcHXuv pic.twitter.com/2XhwausCvT