Morgan Stanley Delays Tokenized Stock Trading Support to First Quarter of 2027
Summary
- Morgan Stanley said it has delayed support for tokenized stock trading from the second half of this year to the first quarter of 2027.
- Oldenburg said the market will need more time to gain traction because of a shortage of tokenized stock products and the lack of established customer demand.
- She said the DTCC tokenization service due later this month, the GENIUS Act set for January next year, the unpassed CLARITY Act and whether the Fed allows such activity are key variables for expanding digital-asset businesses.
Forecast Trend Report by Period
Morgan Stanley has delayed support for tokenized stock trading from the second half of this year to the first quarter of 2027.
Amy Oldenburg, Morgan Stanley’s head of digital asset strategy, said at the Token2049 event in Singapore that trading support for tokenized stocks through an alternative trading system, or ATS, could become available in the first quarter of 2027, The Block reported on October 12. That is later than the second-half 2026 timeline the bank presented in March.
Oldenburg said Morgan Stanley is building the related infrastructure, but there are still too few tokenized stock products available for trading in the market. “To support trading on an ATS, there first has to be a product,” she said. “Because the products themselves don’t exist, customer demand has not formed either.” The comments suggest the market needs more time before broader adoption takes hold.
She added that participation could expand once an institutional framework is in place. Oldenburg pointed to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s planned launch of a tokenization service later this month as a key turning point. She also cited the GENIUS Act, which is scheduled to take effect in January 2027, as another factor that could influence financial institutions’ expansion into digital-asset businesses.
Regulatory uncertainty remains a hurdle. Oldenburg said the failure of the CLARITY Act to pass left some of the regulatory standards needed for traditional financial institutions to enter blockchain markets unclear. Whether the Federal Reserve allows such activity is also an important factor, she said. More important than the bill’s failure itself, she added, is clarifying the regulatory requirements that would apply to financial institutions.
Morgan Stanley plans to expand the business to support both traditional financial products and blockchain-based assets. An ATS is a trading system that matches buy and sell orders outside regular exchanges such as Nasdaq. Oldenburg said support for tokenized stocks is an extension of the firm’s existing business model, which has offered equities, derivatives and swaps. The strategy is aimed at meeting demand from clients seeking to use both traditional financial markets and on-chain markets.
