Wall Street is going all-in on blockchain; could this be the start of the biggest infrastructure revolution in the history of traditional finance?
Written by: Jason Rosenthal
Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Wall Street is no longer just making a symbolic exploration of blockchain; it is migrating to it.
After years of observation, various institutions that form the backbone of the global capital market—including exchanges, clearinghouses, and electronic trading platforms—are shifting their operations onto the blockchain.
What is happening now is the largest infrastructure upgrade in the capital markets since the shift to electronic trading 30 years ago.
However, most people don't realize that this transformation has happened until it is complete.
Why now: Speed changes everything
Every institution moving in this direction shares the same belief—on-chain infrastructure will significantly improve the velocity of money. History has clearly shown what the results will be.
Looking back at the transformative impact of electronic trading in the 1990s: Before the advent of electronic communication networks and online brokers, a trade took minutes to complete, bid-ask spreads were quoted in fractions, and market access was limited by geographical location and capital size. With infrastructure improvements, spreads narrowed dramatically, commissions dropped from $150 to $9.95, and then to zero, trading volume exploded, and individual investor participation increased significantly. Entering the 21st century, the market landscape is vastly different from the 1990s—not only have costs decreased dramatically, but the market size has also expanded tremendously.
Tokenization applies the same logic to the entire global financial system: enabling 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and seamless cross-border circulation. It fractionals assets that previously required six-figure capital thresholds and allows collateral to flow in real time, rather than remaining idle overnight. This results in faster capital turnover, broader participation, and a larger overall market size.
What exactly does tokenization mean? Tokenized assets refer to the digital representation of real-world assets—such as U.S. Treasury bonds, Apple stock, and real estate deeds—recorded on a blockchain as programmable tokens. Unlike the traditional model where ownership is tracked through a centralized database by a custodian during business hours in a single time zone, tokenized assets exist on-chain: they can be instantly transferred, programmed, and settled anywhere in the world, at any time.
It is not a derivative, but a real asset with superior underlying infrastructure.
The organization has already taken action.
In December 2025, the U.S. Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation (SDC) received a no-action letter from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), authorizing it to tokenize real-world assets on an approved blockchain. SDC processed $3.7 trillion in transactions in 2024. The company plans to launch a production-grade tokenization service for U.S. Treasury securities in the first half of 2026.
On January 19, 2026, the New York Stock Exchange announced the launch of a platform for 24/7 on-chain trading and settlement of U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds—supporting fractional share trading, instant settlement, and stablecoin funding—and partnered with BNY Mellon and Citigroup to provide tokenized deposit support for the Intercontinental Exchange's clearinghouse. The world's most iconic stock exchange is migrating on-chain.
In August 2025, Tradeweb completed its first fully on-chain, USDC-funded, real-time trade of U.S. Treasury bonds—executed on a Saturday outside the traditional settlement window—with participants including Bank of America, Citadel Securities, U.S. Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation, and Virtu Financial. Its business scope continues to expand quarterly and now covers both cross-border and intraday settlements. Nasdaq also submitted its own rule change proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2025.
These developments increasingly reflect a trend of overall migration, rather than isolated experimental attempts.
Hidden costs in the existing system
There is a second force driving this process: the existing market structure is built around intermediaries, rather than around the market itself.
Take a typical securities transaction as an example: Investors pay the bid-ask spread to brokers. In institutional trading, prime brokers charge financing fees. Exchanges and transfer agents each charge their respective fees. Custodians charge asset custody fees. U.S. securities clearing and settlement companies charge fees at each stage of clearing, netting, and settlement. Even if the U.S. finally implements T+1 settlement in 2024—a reform that has taken decades because previous settlement cycles lasted several days—funds will still be locked overnight, constituting a "structural cost" for all participants.
Smart contracts and atomic settlement technology can compress these layers of steps. Now, both parties can complete transactions instantly on the blockchain and achieve final settlement.
The rent-taking in the existing system—that is, its profit margin—does not disappear…but rather transforms into opportunities for new entrants. In other words, the profit margins of existing institutions are precisely where your opportunity to build new infrastructure lies.
The final key lies in regulatory clarity—and this condition is finally beginning to be met. If the current momentum continues, the Clarity Act is expected to have an impact on traditional finance, just as the Genius Act has had on the adoption and development of stablecoins.
The institutional safeguards that large institutions have been hoping for are finally on the horizon. So, what does this mean for those who build such systems?
The migration of global financial infrastructure to the blockchain will create demand for entirely new categories of products and services.
The most proactive and established institutions are not your competitors, but your clients. The U.S. Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation has no intention of developing its own middleware, the New York Stock Exchange has no intention of building compliance tools, and Tradeweb has no intention of creating a cross-border distribution layer.
These organizations are laying out a regulated, institutionally compliant foundation layer. The founders are responsible for building all the applications that run on top of this foundation.
This mirrors the development model of the 1990s. Exchanges didn't create ETRADE, nor Bloomberg, nor did they develop order management systems and prime brokerage platforms that defined the next generation. These achievements were all built by founders who foresaw future trends.
More participants, faster capital turnover, and lower transaction friction.
More abundant liquidity and broader market space.
History has clearly revealed the ultimate direction of this process.
The window of opportunity for building the basic infrastructure for the tokenized financial market has opened.
