Morgan Stanley will support tokenized shares in the internal environment in 2026
Morgan Stanley will allow clients to trade tokenized versions of US stocks and ETFs on its internal ATS from late 2026, following SEC pilots at DTCC and Nasdaq for on-chain payments.
Summary
- Morgan Stanley plans to enable tokenized issuance and settlement of select blue-chip US stocks and ETFs on its separate trading platform by H2 2026, which operates alongside traditional stocks.
- The move builds on a token share market that has grown to nearly $800m in value and $1.8b in monthly volume, with around 50,000 monthly addresses and 130,000 total addresses.
- It is equivalent to a broader change in the US: the SEC gave DTCC a three-year window to hold tokenized securities and approved a pilot for Nasdaq to be paid in tokenized shares without changing trading rules.
Morgan Stanley plans to switch to tokenized stock trading for institutional clients on its internal trading platform in the second half of 2026, a significant uptick in Wall Street’s push to bring traditional equity to the blockchain rails. Amy Oldenburg, the bank’s head of digital asset strategy, told a panel at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on Tuesday that ATS – which currently manages listed stocks, ETFs and American depositary receipts – will allow certain securities to be issued and settled in the form of tokens alongside their traditional counterparts. “This is not FOMO,” Oldenburg said in separate comments reported by AOL, describing the rollout as a “very controlled and multi-step journey” that coincides with the extensive development of Morgan Stanley’s trading and settlement infrastructure.
The plan positions Morgan Stanley to sit right in the middle of the fastest-growing stock segment, with on-chain presentations of US equities reaching nearly $800 million in market value and nearly $1.8 billion in monthly trading volume by December 2025, according to ChainCatcher market research. That study notes about 50,000 monthly active addresses and 130,000 addresses that hold a total value in tokenized equities, a sign that the use goes beyond niche testing and the creation of a common portfolio for offshore and crypto-native investors. At Morgan Stanley’s ATS, the first phase will likely focus on US blue chip stocks and ETFs, while Oldenburg previously expressed interest in connecting the bank’s wealth clients and advisory channels to a wider range of digital securities over time.
Morgan Stanley’s move sits in a regulatory space that has become the most residential area for tokenized securities. Towards the end of 2025, the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a do-nothing letter to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), allowing its Depository Trust Company unit to hold and recognize tokenized shares, bonds and other real-world assets on selected blockchains for a period of three years. This effectively gave DTCC permission to use token services at scale and paved the way for traditional broker-dealers and banks to connect to on-chain settlement without leaving the existing market structure.
Recently, the SEC approved a pilot for Nasdaq to support trading in tokenized shares, allowing participants to choose to settle in tokens while maintaining the same order book, substantive rules and shareholder rights as traditional shares. ChainCatcher notes that the Nasdaq pilot is designed to “test the feasibility of on-chain settlement without changing the trading structure,” a model that closely mirrors Morgan Stanley’s plan to add token legs to the existing ATS instead of creating a separate crypto-only exchange. In parallel, Morgan Stanley has applied for a Bitcoin and Solana ETF, is preparing a native Bitcoin storage and trading platform, and, according to RootData and CryptoRank, is developing a digital wallet to support tokenized assets – suggesting that tokenized shares are one pillar in the broader roadmap of digital securities.
