NYSE and Blockchain.com sign MOU to bring tokenized stocks to market

Blockchain.com and the New York Stock Exchange have signed a memorandum of understanding to bring tokenized stocks to market.

In a statement released Wednesday, the two said that, pending approval, Blockchain.com users would be able to trade tokenized U.S.-listed shares and ETFs on NYSE’s planned digital alternative trading system.

Wall Street’s increasing interest in Bitcoin and its surrounding infrastructure is the backdrop. Intercontinental Exchange, which owns NYSE, disclosed earlier this year that it had taken a stake in crypto exchange OKX.

Peter Smith, Blockchain.com’s executive chairman and CEO, said in a statement: “People shouldn’t be limited in owning stocks based on where they happen to live or the brokerage and information they may or may not have access to.”

“Connecting to the NYSE digital alternative trading system will enable us to extend the opportunity to invest in these digital assets to tens of millions of Blockchain.com users around the world.”

Lynn Martin, president of NYSE Group, added: “The future of capital markets belongs to institutions that unite the trust of traditional finance with the innovation and accessibility of digital assets.”

In January, NYSE said it was building a venue where traders could buy and sell tokenized versions of U.S.-listed equities and ETFs, with those trades settled on the blockchain 24/7.

Crypto firms and their infrastructure have attracted Wall Street’s attention largely because of the interest in tokenizing assets like stocks. BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, traditional finance heavyweights, have for years used blockchain rails to tokenize money funds.

Momentum has picked up since the U.S. elected Donald Trump, a pro-crypto president, and regulators adopted a more accommodating approach to oversight. Tokenized stock trading received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

In January, the S&P 500 gave crypto platform Trade[XYZ] the go-ahead to launch a new derivative contract on Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange, enabling traders to trade the stock index 24-7.

Payward, which owns crypto exchange Kraken, and fintech firm SoFi Technologies said last month they had agreed to route SoFi customers’ crypto orders through Kraken’s institutional trading platform and list SoFi’s stablecoin on the exchange.