Morgan Stanley joins DTCC tokenization service for equities and Treasuries

Morgan Stanley joins the operational launch of DTS

Morgan Stanley said on November 4, 2026 that it is among the first banks to tokenize real-world assets following the launch of the DTCC Tokenization Service, or DTS. The bank’s post refers to converting US equities and US Treasury securities into tokenized form. It does not disclose how many securities are involved, their value or the transaction volume already completed. The announcement establishes operational participation, not a broad migration of Morgan Stanley’s custody business to a blockchain.

DTS was launched on October 28 by Depository Trust Company, DTCC’s depository subsidiary. The service creates digital representations of securities that remain in DTC custody. Eligible users can convert certain securities entitlements between traditional and tokenized form and receive them in approved digital wallets. DTCC presents the system as a bridge between its regulated post-trade infrastructure and multiple distributed-ledger networks.

Digital twins, not unsupported new securities

DTCC calls the representations “digital twins.” According to the company, they retain the ownership rights, investor protections and economic entitlements of their traditional counterparts. The reference asset therefore does not leave DTC’s custody system when an entitlement is tokenized. This architecture differs from a token created without a corresponding asset or from an unrestricted transfer to any address: access, wallets and movements remain subject to the service framework and applicable controls.

Twenty DTC participants have signed access agreements, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, J.P. Morgan, Fidelity Investments, Citadel Securities, State Street and UBS. DTCC says DTC holds more than $114 trillion in assets under custody. That figure measures the scale of the depository infrastructure; it is not the value already tokenized. The October 28 release does not provide an aggregate value for securities converted at launch, and signing an agreement does not prove that every participant has already completed a transaction.

Two launch networks and a regulated scope

The service is currently integrated with Canton Network and DTCC’s private Besu network. Additional networks are expected in 2027 under the announced roadmap. The framework also relies on a Securities and Exchange Commission no-action letter received by DTC in December 2025. It authorizes the planned framework for Russell 1000 constituents, exchange-traded funds tracking major indices and US Treasury securities; it does not turn the entire US market into tokenized assets.

The intended benefits concern collateral mobility, access to new liquidity pools and capital efficiency. They still need to be measured in live use. The next useful evidence will be the amounts actually converted, transfer times, collateral usage, operating costs and active-user counts. As of November 4, the verifiable fact is narrower: Morgan Stanley is using DTS to convert certain equities and Treasuries into digital representations backed by securities held at DTC, within the regulated framework described by DTCC.