A $100tn TradFi giant just gave crypto a huge boost. ‘Never seen anything move as quickly’

Traditional finance just gave crypto a huge vote of confidence.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation — which clears nearly $4 quadrillion in annual transactions and custodies $100 trillion — will be tokenising US Treasury securities on the Canton Network, the DTCC announced Wednesday.

The move highlights how the next chapter of onchain finance will be forged by systems — like Canton — that mirror how markets actually operate, comply with regulatory frameworks, and are designed to scale securely at institutional levels, according to Ari Redbord, global head of policy and government affairs at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs

“Canton was built for how regulated markets actually operate,” Redbord told DL News. “I have never seen anything move as quickly once it got going.”

The move is the latest pro-crypto push by a critical US capital markets institution amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping transformation of the industry.

It’s a major leap forward for the adoption of blockchain technology and comes one week after the the Securities and Exchange Commission authorised the clearinghouse to tokenise assets.

It also highlights how traditional finance players like BlackRock, State Street and Deutsche Bank are ploughing into their tokenisation efforts. This comes as real world assets being turned into digital tokens on blockchains have surged into an $410 billion juggernaut in 2025, per data from rwa.xyz.

But not everyone is happy about the decision. Many had hoped for the DTCC — a key pillar of global finance — to select a more decentralised blockchain like Ethereum.

“Canton has taken the path of enshrining existing intermediaries — DTCC and Broadridge — that are prime candidates for disruption by tokenisation,” Silicon Valley crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro said on X.

“Choosing Canton will doom DTCC to irrelevance,” Shapiro said. “The primary point of tokenisation should be to eliminate these intermediaries, instead Canton has given them significant ownership over the network, which is even worse, since it’s a permissioned network.”

Washington charges ahead

The DTCC is the backbone of US markets and directly connected to Washington.

Regulatory approval for tokenisation is the latest adjustment to the American financial system by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Earlier in December, the CFTC announced the launch of a digital assets pilot programme that will include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the second-largest stablecoin, USDC. It follows a tokenised collateral initiative launched in September.

Meanwhile, SEC chair Paul Atkins has embarked on a campaign to overhaul and “future-proof” the agency’s new crypto regulations.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 1% over the past 24 hours, trading at $87,288.
• Ethereum down 2.5% over the past 24 hours trading at $2,853.

What we’re reading

• Bitcoin price ‘collapse’ to $10,000? Why ‘post-inflation deflation’ mirrors 2008 crash — DL News
• Coinbase to launch stock trading, prediction market, AI ‘advisor’ — DL News
• How the Crypto Market Structure Law Would Expose that Trump’s WLFI Isn’t DeFi — Unchained
• A new Fed Chair favorite emerges? — Milk Road
• Coinbase: Why AI will ‘revolutionise’ crypto markets in 2026 amidst $565m startup boom — DL News

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email at [email protected].