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On March 18, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s rule change to trade securities in tokenized form. Eligible assets include Russell 1000 stocks and ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100. Tokenized and conventional shares carry identical rights and trade on the same order books with the same tickers. The only difference: the buyer sets a tokenization flag at order entry and the DTC handles settlement on blockchain rails. First trades could go live by Q3 2026.

The approval ties into the DTC’s no-action letter from December 2025, which authorized blockchain-based settlement for eligible securities. The pilot scope is limited, but the framework now exists for tokenized equity trading on a major U.S. exchange.

Six days after Nasdaq’s greenlight, NYSE made its own move. The exchange partnered with Securitize, the BlackRock-backed tokenization specialist with $4B+ in assets under management, to build a Digital Trading Platform from the ground up. Securitize becomes the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-native stocks and ETFs on the platform. Its broker-dealer arm will also trade on it.

The architectural contrast with Nasdaq matters. Nasdaq is layering tokenization onto existing clearing infrastructure through the DTC pilot. NYSE is building a separate blockchain-native venue designed for instant settlement, stablecoin-based funding, and 24/7 trading. Same destination. Two different routes.

Mastercard agreed to acquire London-based BVNK for up to $1.8 billion (including $300M in performance-linked contingent payments), eclipsing Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge.

BVNK enables businesses to send, receive, and convert stablecoins across 130+ countries. It processed $30B+ in stablecoin payments last year and counts Worldpay, Deel, and Flywire among its clients. For Mastercard, this plugs blockchain-based payment rails directly into its global network for cross-border remittances, B2B payments, and treasury operations.

Coinbase had nearly acquired BVNK for ~$2 billion last November before walking away. Mastercard, which had also explored buying competitor Zerohash, circled back and closed. Days later, it launched its Crypto Partner Program linking 85+ digital asset firms into its network. The world’s second-largest payment network just declared stablecoins core infrastructure.

Invesco, a $2.2 trillion asset manager, will become the investment manager of Superstate’s USTB fund, one of the five largest tokenized U.S. Treasury products globally. USTB holds $967 million in short-duration Treasuries and has onboarded 150+ institutional investors since launching in 2024. The transition closes in Q2 2026, at which point the fund will be renamed the Invesco Short Duration U.S. Government Securities Fund.

Superstate remains independent and keeps full control of the onchain infrastructure: token issuance, blockchain settlement, and digital transfer agency. Invesco brings portfolio management through its global liquidity team ($200B+ in short-term assets) and institutional distribution. The fund keeps its ticker, smart contracts, and token address. Invesco becomes the first independent asset manager to use Superstate’s digital transfer agent infrastructure.

Superstate founder Robert Leshner described the collaboration as “the blueprint for how funds and ETFs will come onchain.” Superstate built USTB in part as a prototype to demonstrate that tokenized fund infrastructure works in practice, and is now positioning its technology as a white-label service for Wall Street.

Apex Group, which services $3.5 trillion in assets, has committed to adopting T-REX Ledger as its default multi-chain infrastructure for tokenized securities, with a target of $100 billion in tokenized assets by June 2027.

T-REX Ledger is the cross-chain compliance reference layer built by T-REX Network, born out of the ERC-3643 Association’s working group. When a tokenized asset lives on multiple chains, no single chain can see the full compliance picture. Investor caps, transfer restrictions, and regulatory rules cannot be enforced without a shared record. T-REX Ledger gives every connected chain a single compliance layer to query before settling a transaction, giving transfer agents one registry to maintain, issuers access to every liquidity venue, and custodians full cap-table visibility across chains. Polygon Labs joins as a founding strategic technology partner. The T-REX Network ecosystem has already tokenized more than $32 billion in assets on the ERC-3643 standard.

Bitpanda (7M+ users, ~EUR 371M in 2025 revenue, eyeing a Frankfurt IPO this year) launched Vision Chain, an Ethereum L2 on the Optimism OP Stack. Purpose-built for banks and asset managers to tokenize real-world assets under MiCA, MiFID II, and DORA.

It is the first fully managed OP Enterprise chain. Fees denominated in euro stablecoins. Onchain KYC baked in. Existing Bitpanda Enterprise partners include N26, Deutsche Boerse Group, and selected Raiffeisen banks. Mainnet targeted later this year.

Bitpanda CEO Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad said: “Today we still talk about digital assets, but in the future virtually all assets will probably be digital. Tokenization will fundamentally transform capital markets.”

Whop, a creator marketplace with 21 million users and $1B+ in sales last year, launched Whop Treasury. User balances now route through onchain rails to earn yield automatically. Aave founder Stani Kulechov called it “one of the biggest DeFi-to-fintech integrations ever.”

Under the hood: balances convert to USDT0, flow through Veda Labs vaults on Plasma, and land in Aave lending markets. Users never touch a wallet or pay gas. The entire DeFi stack is abstracted at the product layer. Kulechov described the setup as a blueprint for how consumer platforms can build on decentralized infrastructure, and expects more fintechs to follow the same model.

On Monday, the Ethereum Foundation’s Enterprise team hosted the second-ever Institutional Ethereum Forum in New York. The room included representatives from 50+ of the leading FIs in the world. T

he conversation centered on where tokenized asset infrastructure is headed, how institutions are moving from pilots to production, and what Ethereum’s role looks like as the base settlement layer.

ETH: Over 61% of all tokenized assets are on Ethereum, per Token Terminal.

Ethereum’s quantum plans with Justin Drake

See you next week.

James Smith & David Walsh