USDC (USDC)

The stablecoin bill has been discussed countless times this year, but a deeper reform, which has been quietly advancing since December 2025, has rarely been systematically explained. The protagonists are not crypto-native tokenized US stock projects, but the old-money infrastructure of DTC, DTCC, NYSE, and Nasdaq.

The main battleground for stock RWA is in US stocks themselves, not in the crypto-native track. The US does not intend to let exchanges use the name of TradFi to let users gamble away their money; it wants to firmly control the clearing process itself.

- December 11, 2025: The SEC Division of Trading and Markets issued a no-action letter to DTC, allowing it to set up a three-year tokenization pilot.
- December 17, 2025: DTCC announced a partnership with Digital Asset to tokenize US Treasuries held by DTC on the Canton Network as the starting point for the pilot.
- January 19, 2026: NYSE parent company ICE unveiled its tokenized securities platform plan, with a clear goal of 24/7 trading, and partnered with BNY Mellon and Citigroup to launch tokenized deposits.
- March 18, 2026: The SEC officially approved Nasdaq's rule amendments, allowing specific stocks to be traded in tokenized form.
- March 31, 2026: DTCC internally established a new Digital Assets Solutions business line, with the mission to put all securities held by DTC on-chain.
- April 17, 2026: The SEC approved NYSE's almost identical rule amendments with immediate effect, followed by NYSE Texas two weeks later.

By May 2026, DTCC had disclosed externally: over 50 financial institutions had joined this set of tokenization services, with the goal of starting the first batch of tokenized securities trading in July 2026 and a full launch in October.

Almost all listed US stocks are on either NYSE or Nasdaq. In other words, no matter who trades, they ultimately cannot bypass their rule systems, which is the true weight of their entry into tokenized US stocks.

The second half is not about DeFi replacing Wall Street, but about Wall Street using blockchain tools to deepen its moats.

To understand what NYSE and Nasdaq are doing, one must first grasp the true core behind them: DTC.

DTC (Depository Trust Company) is the sole central securities depository in the United States, a subsidiary of DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation).

- As of 2025, DTC holds over $100 trillion in securities under custody.
- It manages approximately 1.4 million securities—all US stocks, ETFs, and corporate bonds are held there.
- Every share of US stock you buy on Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, Futu, Tiger Brokers, or Longbridge, ultimately has its ownership registered in DTC's central database.

Outsiders often have a common misconception: they think US stocks are settled in real-time, meaning money and shares are exchanged immediately during a trade. This is completely false.

The traditional process is T+1: an order placed today means money and shares truly change hands tomorrow. The float, overnight interest differential, and margin utilization generated during this interim period are a significant source of profit for much of Wall Street's food chain.

DTC's presence is almost zero in daily life, but it is the rule itself, dictating the entire clearing path of US stocks. This current development is essentially DTC putting itself on-chain. NYSE and Nasdaq's tokenization rules merely extend DTC's action one step further towards the trading side.

A unified order book is the real US stock market.

According to NYSE/Nasdaq rule amendments: tokenized stocks and traditional stocks share the same order book, the same price, and the same set of execution priorities.

Traditional settlement: T+1, enters DTC ledger.
Tokenized settlement: Close to T+0, enters your on-chain wallet.

In other words, from a trade matching perspective, tokenized NVIDIA stock and traditional NVIDIA stock are completely equivalent and interchangeable.

This move directly uproots existing on-chain tokenized US stock projects.

Previously, tokenized US stocks by projects like Backed, xStocks, and Ondo were essentially offshore synthetic assets: you weren't buying real shares, but derivatives where someone else held the real shares and issued you a claim.

Two fundamental flaws of this model:

First, liquidity is an island; it has its own price, and the traditional market has its own price. The two often diverge by several percentage points, and settlement and trading are unrelated to US stocks, making them two different things.

Second, the legal status is ambiguous; US retail investors cannot buy them, and institutions cannot include them on their balance sheets.

The entire crypto-native tokenized stock/ETF sector grew by 128% in the second half of 2025, with a total size of only close to $1 billion.
Looking at Robinhood's own tokenized stock (HOODX), its market cap is only ~$15 million, with ~$2 million in 24-hour trading volume.
Meanwhile, Robinhood's parent company itself has a market cap of ~$69 billion.

A difference of four orders of magnitude.

The US solution directly shuts down this problem: the same order book, the same price, just different settlement methods.

Once tokenized US stocks go live on NYSE/Nasdaq, offshore synthetic versions will completely lose their reason for existence. For the same asset, one side offers compliant real stocks with prices consistent with the broader market; the other side offers isolated liquidity and regulatory ambiguity. Neither institutions nor retail investors will have a reason to choose the latter.

Once launched, the decentralized narrative in the RWA track is effectively dead.
All the $100 trillion RWA grand narratives you see in the future are essentially DTCC, BNY, ICE, and other old money dividing the pie, and crypto-native projects are highly unlikely to even get an entry ticket.

The foundation of this matter rests on three cards:

1. Asset Custody: DTC, DTCC system.
2. Regulatory Licenses: SEC-registered exchanges, clearing agencies, transfer agents.
3. Clearing Infrastructure: DTC ledger + the chains now attached to it.

Whoever holds these three cards simultaneously will be the true winner in the RWA track.

Currently, none of these three cards are in the hands of crypto-native projects. Chains like Canton Network can enter because they first reformed their governance structure to be institution-friendly and were then chosen by DTCC as a cooperative base, not because they are decentralized.

Once tokenized US stocks go live, it will create an interesting positioning opportunity: platforms that simultaneously hold traditional brokerage licenses + crypto trading capabilities will significantly benefit.

Robinhood is the most typical example:

- It has a complete broker-dealer license in the US, allowing it to directly connect to DTC for traditional clearing.
- Through the Bitstamp acquisition, it obtained a compliant crypto exchange license in Europe and has been running Stock Tokens (xStocks system) in Europe for several months.
- It has done perpetual contracts, crypto, and zero-commission stock trading, making it one of the few retail platforms with products and users on both TradFi and crypto sides.

In addition, there are several other derivative positioning opportunities:

1. US-based traditional brokerages: Those that can directly connect to DTC and most quickly sell tokenized stocks to local retail investors.

2. Compliant crypto exchanges: Those that obtain cooperation licenses with NYSE/Nasdaq, or already have ATS qualifications, such as Coinbase (already running tokenized equities pilots).

3. Compliant stablecoin issuers: USDC stands to benefit the most. Tokenized US stocks will use on-chain settlement, and institutions are most likely to use compliant USD tokens. USDC, Paxos, PYUSD are in the first tier, while USDT may not directly enter under US compliance standards.

Players positioned between traditional brokerage licenses and crypto trading capabilities will be the most beneficiaries in this round.

The core narrative of the crypto second half is no longer resistance, but compliant integration.

After the DTC pilot officially kicks off in the second half of 2026, with the first batch of tokenized US stocks and tokenized Treasuries going live for trading, the narrative focus of the entire crypto space will undergo a significant shift:

The largest, most stable, and longest-term money in the crypto space will all come from the compliant system. This means:

- Institutional dominance will further outweigh retail sentiment.
- The compliance narrative will further suppress the decentralization narrative.
- DeFi protocols underpinned by USD and US Treasuries, and stablecoins (on-chain money markets, on-chain cash management) will significantly benefit.
- Completely unregulated DeFi will be treated as a separate case; it won't disappear, but it will be isolated from mainstream capital, relying long-term on internal circulation among crypto-native users.

Starting from the second half of 2026, the largest, most stable, and longest-term money in the crypto space will increasingly come from the compliant system. This means that projects that traditionally champion decentralization and grand narratives will gradually be marginalized.

Players who can connect to the DTC, ICE, BNY pipeline will achieve real growth. The main thrust of tokenized US stocks is, for now, not in the crypto circle.