Trillions of dollars remain tied up in settlement infrastructure across the global financial system each day, limiting how quickly institutions can redeploy capital.
Adena Friedman, CEO of Nasdaq, believes a major shift could change that.
Speaking to CNBC at the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore in October 2026, she argued that blockchain could unlock that capital by allowing institutions to move tokenized Treasurys, stocks, money market funds, and cash in real time.
The idea is already moving beyond discussion. Nasdaq has secured SEC approval for a tokenized securities pilot and a nearly 23-hour trading day scheduled to begin Dec. 6, 2026.
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Friedman calls tokenization Nasdaq’s next frontier for Treasurys and equities
Friedman’s argument targets the collateral that banks must park while trades clear through a settlement system that can take a full business day to process, CNBC reported.
Blockchain-based tokenization would compress that timeline by allowing securities and cash to move on digital rails, releasing capital that institutions could redeploy almost immediately.
She described the shift as “the next leg of innovation for securities markets” at the Futures Industry Association (FIA) Global Cleared Markets Conference in March 2026, Nasdaq’s newsroom confirmed.
Her remarks at TOKEN2049 built on that vision by tying tokenized collateral directly to the push for round-the-clock market access, CNBC confirmed.
The SEC approved Nasdaq’s proposal to trade securities in tokenized form on March 18, 2026, making Nasdaq the first major U.S. exchange to receive that clearance.
Eligible securities under the pilot include stocks in the Russell 1000 Index and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indexes.
Tokenized and traditional shares trade on the same order book and have the same ticker symbol and Committee on Uniform Securities Identification Procedures (CUSIP) number under the approved framework.
An investor buying a tokenized stock gets the exact same legal and economic rights as someone holding the conventional version.
Nasdaq commits $100 million to Payward as DTCC joins the tokenization race
Nasdaq has paired its regulatory wins with significant capital commitments and institutional partnerships throughout 2026 to build the infrastructure to support Friedman’s vision.
The exchange and Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, announced a partnership in March 2026 to build an equities transformation gateway connecting regulated markets with blockchain networks, Payward confirmed in a joint release.
The gateway relies on Kraken’s xStocks framework, which provides tokenized exposure to publicly traded equities on blockchain rails.
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Nasdaq Ventures deepened that relationship in September 2026 by committing $100 million to Payward. The two firms plan to launch Nasdaq Equity Tokens, a blockchain-based stock framework that preserves full shareholder rights, in the first half of 2027, Nasdaq press release showed.
The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) added further momentum by launching its tokenization service on Oct. 28, 2026, covering 34 securities with a combined market value of approximately $30 trillion, Global Finance Magazine reported.
The DTCC holds more than $114 trillion in total securities custody, and more than 30 firms tested the system ahead of the October launch, Business Wire confirmed.
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Nasdaq’s December launch, Wall Street forecasts put tokenization shift on the clock
The vision faces its first real-market test on Dec. 6, when Nasdaq opens a new overnight session, stretching the exchange’s trading day to nearly 23 hours.
The session will run from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. EST on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the exchange confirmed on its global trading hours hub.
Wall Street research firms project that the infrastructure shift behind both extended trading and tokenized settlement will grow beyond those early volumes.
Citi Institute estimated in its June 2026 report, “Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain,” that tokenized securities will expand from roughly $17 billion today to $5.5 trillion by 2030.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, devoted much of his 2026 annual chairman’s letter to tokenization, framing the technology less as a crypto story and more as a long-overdue upgrade to the settlement rails that support traditional securities.
<strong>Tokenization could help accelerate that future by updating the plumbing of the financial system, making investments easier to issue, easier to trade, and easier to access</strong>.
Tokenized equities have already climbed to approximately $4.67 billion in combined market capitalization as of Nov. 3, 2026, lending early support to those projections, according to CryptoBriefing.
What Nasdaq’s infrastructure push signals for everyday investors
Faster settlement, extended trading hours, and more efficient collateral movement would lower costs embedded in stock and bond transactions over time, Citi Institute projected in its June report.
Clearing fees and margin requirements both have expenses that investors indirectly pay through their brokerage accounts, the bank noted.
The tokenization pilot operates at the institutional level through participating broker-dealers and clearinghouses, so individual investors will encounter the effects gradually as their platforms adopt the new infrastructure, the SEC’s approval framework indicated.
Expanded overnight trading access starting Dec. 6, 2026, will be the first change visible inside a standard brokerage account.
Jones Day has framed the Dec. 6 overnight launch as “an evolution, but not yet a revolution.”
The firm argues that its real impact will depend on whether institutional participation in the tokenization pilot and DTCC’s service scales quickly enough through 2027 to move extended-hours trading beyond the thin volumes it attracts today.
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