What CFOs Need to Know About the NYSE’s Tokenization Platform

The digital asset space first wanted to replace the financial system. Now, the blockchain ecosystem is lowering its gaze from that sky-high goal and seeking instead merely to eliminate legacy inefficiencies in payments and capital markets.

And that goal got a shot in the arm on Monday (Jan. 19) with the announcement that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), part of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE), is developing a platform for the trading and on-chain settlement of tokenized securities, for which it will seek regulatory approvals.

“For more than two centuries, the NYSE has transformed the way markets operate,” said Lynn Martin, president, NYSE Group, in a statement. “We are leading the industry toward fully on-chain solutions, grounded in the unmatched protections and high regulatory standards that position us to marry trust with state-of-the-art technology. Harnessing our expertise to reinvent market infrastructure is how we’ll meet and shape the demands of a digital future.”

“Supporting tokenized securities is a pivotal step in ICE’s strategy to operate on-chain market infrastructure for trading, settlement, custody, and capital formation in the new era of global finance,” added Michael Blaugrund, vice president of strategic initiatives at ICE.

For enterprise chief financial officers (CFOs) and treasury teams, tokenized equities represent both a strategic opportunity and a regulatory minefield. Unlike cryptocurrencies that function as native digital assets, tokenized equities are digital representations of traditional shares recorded on a blockchain, often with shareholder rights, dividends and governance linked to the underlying securities.

But the broader question of how to harmonize centuries-old securities laws with decentralized technologies remains a defining, and as of yet unsolved, challenge for regulators, intermediaries and market participants alike.

More here: Wall Street Moves On-Chain as Tokenization of US Stocks Goes Global

At its essence, tokenization seeks to eliminate legacy inefficiencies in capital markets. Traditional settlement cycles, which are typically T+2 for U.S. equities, embed counterparty, operational and liquidity risks. By contrast, blockchain protocols promise near-instantaneous settlement, reducing counterparty exposure and shortening capital cycles.

Tokenized equities, however, simply aren’t regulated by the U.S. At least, not yet. Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Division of Trading and Markets Staff took a consequential, if incremental, step toward clarifying how traditional market intermediaries, specifically broker-dealers, should treat crypto asset securities.

In the traditional securities world of equities, corporate bond, and registered funds, physical possession has a well-established meaning: either holding certificated securities or, more commonly today, maintaining accounts at centralized clearinghouses or custodians that satisfy regulatory “good control location” criteria.

With tokenized securities residing on blockchain networks, however, the concept of physical possession is less tangible. Crypto asset “ownership” is typically defined by control over cryptographic private keys, and there is no centralized registry equivalent to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) for many digital assets.

This disconnect created regulatory uncertainty for broker-dealers that wish to carry tokenized securities on behalf of customers. Without clear interpretive guidance, intermediaries were left to extrapolate from existing frameworks, or to rely on outdated advisory statements that did not fully contemplate modern distributed ledger technology (DLT).

PYMNTS covered Wednesday (Jan. 14) how the blockchain-based lender Figure has launched a way for companies to list their equity native on blockchain. The company claimed that its initiative differs from other tokenization efforts in that OPEN equities are blockchain registered, and not a tokenized version of DTCC securities.

And we explored the tokenization topic over this past summer in an interview with Brett McLain, head of payments and blockchain at cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.

“The tokenization of real-world assets [has] long been a holy grail for crypto … making those real-world assets more accessible globally to consumers,” McLain said. “We want to see that grow into other things like real estate and other tangible assets.”

Even BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has gone on record alleging that all assets should be tokenized on a blockchain and tradable online, writing in his 2025 annual shareholder letter: “Every stock, every bond, every fund — every asset — can be tokenized.”

See also: Regulators Rewrite How Blockchain Gets Built

At the same time, the elephant in the room as it relates to tokenization of equities is the fact that there exists no federal policy framework in the U.S. regulating this emerging asset class.

Tokenized equities were among the key reasons why cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase withdrew its support for the Senate Banking Committee’s draft of a market structure bill for digital assets, with the company’s CEO believing that the bill’s text included a “de facto ban” on tokenized equities.

But the NYSE’s own decision to move forward with its tokenized securities initiative underscores a broader transformation: tokenization may soon shift from niche experiment to systemic feature of global capital markets, if regulatory approval allows. For CFOs, success will derive from balancing innovation with governance, shaping strategic initiatives that integrate tokenized equities without compromising compliance or market integrity.

Global regulatory fragmentation also poses a challenge. While U.S. regulators pursue frameworks under the SEC’s aegis, other jurisdictions may implement divergent rules from permissive regimes to outright prohibitions on token trading, potentially forcing multinationals to adopt segmented strategies tailored to each jurisdiction’s legal environment.

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