NYSE Embraces Blockchain

What happened

Last week, the New York Stock Exchange, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, announced plans to develop a new trading venue for tokenized U.S. equities and ETFs. The platform is designed to support near-continuous trading (24/7), combined with blockchain-based settlement.

Tokenized shares are digital representations of traditional securities that will preserve the same economic and governance rights, while relying on blockchain rails for post-trade processes. The objective is not to reinvent equity markets, but to modernize how they operate: faster settlement, lower frictions, and broader accessibility.

Importantly, this is not an isolated announcement. It comes after a series of initiatives across exchanges, clearing houses (e.g., the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, where most U.S. stocks settle), banks, and regulators, all pointing toward the same conclusion: financial infrastructure is evolving toward blockchain, with incumbents actively shaping that transition.

Impact on our Investment Case

Market-structure shift

All investors are affected by this infrastructure upgrade, including us.

The NYSE’s initiative should not be framed as a traditional exchange “doing crypto.” It reflects a deeper evolution of market structure. Extended or near-continuous trading alters how markets absorb information. Earnings releases, macro data, or geopolitical events can be priced as they occur, rather than being compressed into narrow trading windows.

This shift benefits a broad investor base. Global investors gain more natural access to U.S. markets, and price discovery becomes less dependent on artificial opening and closing hours. From an infrastructure perspective, on-chain settlement reduces counterparty risk and improves capital efficiency. These changes are structural, not incremental, and they directly affect liquidity, risk management, and market resilience. For the financial industry, this is one of the most important shifts since the dawn of digital banking in the 1960s and the first ATMs.

Tokenization is unfolding

This development fits squarely within the tokenization super-cycle we have highlighted in recent work. Money (i.e., stablecoins), capital markets, and even event-based markets (i.e., prediction markets) are progressively moving on-chain. These layers reinforce one another. Tokenized shares cannot scale without digital money, just as stablecoins will find their most compelling use cases in capital markets.

Stablecoins and other forms of digital money, such as tokenized deposits, will therefore serve as the settlement layer for tokenized securities. This does not imply that investors must consciously adopt stablecoins. As with today’s financial plumbing, these mechanisms will largely remain invisible, without altering the user experience.

Once capital markets operate on programmable rails, the opportunity set expands. Settlement, collateral management, and corporate actions (still operationally heavy) can become more flexible and efficient.

Who benefits?

From an investment perspective, the beneficiaries of this shift are not the issuers of tokenized shares themselves, but the infrastructure providers enabling tokenization at scale. This includes blockchain protocols used for settlement, stablecoin issuers, and digital money infrastructure, as well as exchanges and clearing platforms upgrading their rails.

Conversely, market participants that delay investment in tokenization or rely on legacy post-trade infrastructure risk losing relevance as trading, settlement, and liquidity progressively migrate to more efficient rails. In a scenario where common shares are fully issued on-chain (as Figure Technology did with its own capital), parts of the traditional custody value chain may also come under pressure.

Our Takeaway

Regulatory clarity is still evolving, but leading institutions are not waiting. We saw how quickly financial players had to adapt following the approval of the GENIUS Act, and they cannot afford to repeat that experience with future market-structure regulation, including the upcoming return of the CLARITY Act, which is expected to include provisions related to tokenized shares. In a landscape where decentralized finance and new entrants move quickly, a wait-and-see strategy carries real strategic risk.

The NYSE’s decision reflects this reality. By moving early, it aims to protect its relevance and position itself at the center of the next generation of market infrastructure.

We reiterate our conviction: stablecoins represent the first scalable application of blockchain in finance, and the tokenization of capital markets is poised to be the next. This announcement directly supports the investment rationale behind our Blockchain & Digital Assets, Fintech, and Stablecoins strategies, which are positioned to benefit from the tokenization of financial infrastructure.

This transition is no longer theoretical; the transition of financial infrastructure toward blockchain is becoming tangible.