The world's most important settlement infrastructure is going digital. On 4 May 2026, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation confirmed it will begin limited production trades of tokenised securities in July 2026, with a full commercial launch planned for October. The announcement confirms wha

18 May 2026 | Category: LAW, REGULATION, POLICY

For the past three years, tokenised finance has had a structural problem: the infrastructure for digital assets and the infrastructure for traditional securities have lived in separate systems, requiring separate workflows, separate reconciliation, and separate governance. Broadridge, the post-trade

The landscape of startup funding in 2026 is changing fast. Venture capital remains powerful, but it is no longer the only serious path. A new wave of regulated digital securities is creating alternative routes to capital for founders who want fairer, broader access, greater control, and more flexible ownership structures.

Sometime in the next two months, a tokenisation platform will ring the opening bell on NASDAQ for the first time. Securitize Corp — the rebranded entity that will emerge from the merger of Securitize, Inc. with Cantor Equity Partners II (CEPT) — is expected to close its business combination in the first half of 2026, trading under the ticker "SECZ."

On 21 April 2026, Atkins told an industry audience that the SEC was "on the cusp" of releasing a framework that would allow tokenised securities to trade directly on blockchain networks for the first time under formal regulatory cover. For an industry that has operated in legal grey areas for years, that statement represents a significant shift in the regulatory weather.

The tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA) is often associated with the dry mechanics of private credit, real estate, and treasuries. But on 21 April 2026, Novarra — a global institutional tokenisation platform — announced an expansion that brings the technology into a much more narrative-driven arena: professional sports. The company is launching a dedicated infrastructure to enable the tokenisation of future revenue streams for athletes, sports organisations, and collegiat

What Morgan Stanley Has Announced. In mid-April 2026, Morgan Stanley named tokenisation of real-world assets "the next major step for upgrading financial infrastructure" and identified it as a top global business focus. The firm is targeting the second half of 2026 to launch a dedicated institutional digital wallet — a product that would allow its institutional clients to hold, transact, and receive tokenised RWAs directly within Morgan Stanley's existing wealth management i

Most so-called "tokenised stocks" — including some popular DeFi products — are synthetic: a token whose price tracks an underlying stock, backed by some form of collateral or contractual claim.

Digital Plumbing evolving The debate about whether tokenisation works has largely been settled. The harder question, the one that will define the next two years, is whether the financial system's underlying infrastructure can support a transition from carefully managed pilots to genuine production scale. From Proof of Concept to Production Problem 2025 was, by most measures, the year institutional tokenisation stopped being theoretical. The EU's MiCA framework became operat

On 15 December 2025, HM Treasury laid the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2025 before Parliament, formally bringing a wide range of cryptoasset activities inside the FSMA regulatory perimeter. The instrument was subsequently published as SI 2026/102 in February 2026. The following day, the FCA published three consultation papers setting out its proposed rules across conduct and organisational requirements (CP25/40), admissions, disclosures a

The Old Infrastructure Is Building the New One. That Is the Point. Two pieces of market structure news from the same week, neither individually dramatic, together illustrate something important about how tokenisation actually enters the financial mainstream. What Happened On 31 March 2026, DTCC launched a new business line, DTCC Digital Asset Solutions, with a mandate to tokenise assets currently held in custody by its depository arm, DTC. On the same day, Apex Group anno

The financial services industry has witnessed a dramatic shift in technology adoption over the past year. Artificial intelligence (AI) moved from experimental pilots to widespread operational use in 80% of firms surveyed by Broadridge. Now, many of these firms are turning their attention to tokenisation as the next major infrastructure change. But is tokenisation truly the next frontier after AI? This post explores recent research findings, the reasons behind this shift, and

What 150 Tokenisation Operators Actually Think - And What It Means for Founders. Most commentary on tokenisation is written by people with something to sell. An asset manager with a tokenised fund. A blockchain platform seeking issuers. A law firm positioning for advisory mandates. The Centrifuge Tokenisation Outlook 2026 is a different kind of document. Centrifuge is a DeFi-native platform - that framing matters, and we will return to it — but the survey it conducted drew

n the rapidly evolving world of startup finance, tokenising equity is emerging as a transformative approach. It offers a fresh way to raise capital, manage ownership, and engage investors. If you’re navigating the UK startup ecosystem, understanding how to leverage this innovation can be a game-changer.

the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued joint guidance that the digital assets industry has been waiting over a decade for. For the first time, the SEC formally defined different types of crypto assets and how the regulator will approach them — ending years of enforcement-by-litigation and replacing it with a clear taxonomy.

For decades, early stage investing has operated within a relatively closed system. Founders raise capital from angel investors, venture funds or family offices. Shares are issued, the cap table grows, and investors typically wait years for a liquidity event such as the next raise, an acquisition or public listing. This model has produced remarkable companies and enormous value creation. Yet it also has well understood limitations. Access to early stage investment opportuni

Major banks, asset managers and market infrastructure providers are increasingly exploring tokenisation as a way to modernise how financial assets are issued, traded and settled. For institutions responsible for managing trillions in global capital, the attraction is not ideological. It is operational. For the UK, the stakes are particularly high. The country is the second-largest asset management centre in the world, holding 12% of global assets under management. The UK i

Creating the token is the easy part. Getting it into investors’ hands is where the regulation lives. If you are a founder exploring tokenisation, one of the first questions you will ask is whether you are allowed to do it. The short answer is yes. But the fuller answer depends on what exactly you mean by “do it.” Tokenising your own equity, creating a digital token that represents shares in your company, is not, in itself, a heavily regulated act. It is broadly comparable to

At the Tokenisation Summit back in January 2026, Sasha Mills of the Bank of England outlined a clear priority for the coming year: building the foundations for the next generation of digital financial infrastructure. Her speech focused on three areas that will shape the UK’s approach to digital markets: regulated stablecoins tokenised collateral expansion of the Digital Securities Sandbox