NYSE Announces New Tokenization Platform with 24/7 Trading

NYSE tokenized securities platform details: 24/7 trading, stablecoin funding, instant settlement

ICE said the platform is designed for “tokenized trading experiences,” listing 24/7 operations, instant settlement, orders sized in dollar amounts, and stablecoin-based funding. The firm said it plans to combine NYSE’s Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based post-trade systems, including support for multiple chains for settlement and custody.

The company said the platform is “subject to regulatory approvals” and would power a new NYSE venue that supports tokenized shares that are fungible with traditionally issued securities, along with tokens “natively issued as digital securities.” ICE also said tokenized shareholders would participate in traditional shareholder dividends and governance rights, and that distribution would be through “non-discriminatory access” to qualified broker-dealers.

ICE also highlighted features that tend to matter most to retail users: 24x7 access, “orders sized in dollar amounts,” and fractional share trading. Those items point to a design where a $50 order can be an order, rather than forcing investors to buy whole shares or manage odd-lot sizing through intermediaries.

For readers tracking the direction of on-chain equities, the headline is not just faster settlement. NYSE is describing a venue built around around-the-clock trading and crypto-style funding rails, instead of limiting blockchain to back-office recordkeeping.

Tokenized shares and Tokenized capital

In traditional U.S. equities, trades are matched on an exchange, then cleared and settled through a chain of broker-dealers, clearinghouses, and custodians on a timetable measured in days. The SEC moved the standard settlement cycle for most broker-dealer transactions in U.S. securities to T+1 in 2024, according to the agency’s 2023 release.

When ICE talks about “instant settlement,” the claim is that the handoff between trade and final ownership update can happen nearly right away, since the record of who owns what is updated on a blockchain instead of through multiple ledgers that reconcile after the fact. ICE did not say which chains it intends to support first, what custody model would be used, or how the venue would manage fail rates and corporate actions during market stress.

“Stablecoin-based funding” means traders could post cash-like crypto tokens to pay for trades or meet margin needs, rather than relying on bank wires that run on limited hours. ICE added a separate piece of context: it said it is working with banks including BNY and Citi to support tokenized deposits across ICE clearinghouses so clearing members can move money outside traditional banking hours and meet margin obligations across time zones.

Tokenized deposits are not the same thing as a stablecoin. A stablecoin is typically a token issued by a non-bank company and backed by reserves, while a tokenized deposit is a bank deposit represented as a token under that bank’s control. ICE did not disclose which stablecoins, deposit tokens, or settlement assets would be eligible on the new platform.

Faster settlement changes the funding math. If a trade settles right away, the buyer needs money right away and the seller needs deliverable shares right away, which can raise the bar for intraday liquidity management even as it reduces multi-day counterparty exposure.

Regulatory approvals, tokenization limits, and what’s next

ICE framed the NYSE platform as one part of a broader digital push that also includes preparing clearing infrastructure for 24/7 trading and the use of tokenized collateral. The announcement lands as the tokenization market shifts from pilots to larger-scale plumbing experiments, including DTCC’s plan to tokenize DTC-custodied Treasuries on Canton Network, which we covered in DTCC’s Quadrillions Move Toward Onchain Treasuries on Canton Network.

Tokenized equities are also not a blank slate. Products already circulate as wrappers or synthetic exposure, and the live dashboards show that activity is material even before any NYSE-backed venue exists. For a broader snapshot of what is already on-chain, see Tokenized Stocks Hit $1.5B in Market Cap as Onchain Equities Broaden.

There is also a harder constraint that the press release does not solve on its own. A token can move on-chain, yet the underlying share and the legal shareholder record can still be anchored to existing registries and corporate law frameworks. Until shares are issued natively on a blockchain and the legal system treats that on-chain record as the source of truth, “tokenization” can still describe a digital wrapper around an analog asset.

That legal layer is not a small detail in U.S. equities. Delaware’s Division of Corporations says more than 2,000,000 business entities have made Delaware their legal home, and that more than 66% of the Fortune 500 are incorporated there, according to its agency overview. A shift toward natively issued on-chain shares would likely need clear paths for corporate registries, transfer agents, and courts to treat a digital ledger as authoritative, not just an audit trail.

Key details were not immediately clear, including a launch timeline, the initial product set, how fungibility with traditionally issued shares would be enforced, which stablecoins or tokenized deposit rails would be supported, and what the approval path looks like for a new venue design. Watch for NYSE and SEC rule filings tied to the platform, as well as U.S. market structure bills that shape what “digital securities” can look like in practice, including the developments we tracked in U.S. Senate CLARITY Act vote canceled for HR 3633 and our longer view on U.S. crypto regulation and policy in 2026.