NYSE and Blockchain.com Sign an MOU on Tokenized US Stocks

NYSE Group and Blockchain.com said on Wednesday they have signed a memorandum of understanding to put tokenized US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds in front of Blockchain.com's users. The venue that would carry the trades, NYSE's digital alternative trading system, is not running yet. Neither company gave a launch date, a price, or a list of countries where the service would be offered. A memorandum of understanding is a statement of intent, not a contract, and this one is conditional on regulatory approval.

What was actually agreed

Two things. Blockchain.com users would get access to tokenized equities and ETFs on the NYSE digital ATS, an alternative trading system being a venue that matches orders without carrying the registration a full exchange does. Market data then moves both ways: ICE Data Services, the NYSE group's data arm, plans to distribute Blockchain.com's crypto analytics to institutional subscribers, while Blockchain.com folds NYSE and ICE feeds into its own app. The data half needs no new venue. The trading half cannot begin until the ATS does.

The Block's account of the planned venue lists round-the-clock trading, fractional shares, funding in stablecoins and immediate onchain settlement, with tokenized listed shares and natively digital shares both supported, and dividend and voting rights carried through. That description comes from one report. The Crypto Times dates the platform's announcement to January 2026, which would put eight months between the announcement and a venue that still has not opened; no other outlet we read gives a date for it.

The numbers, and what they count

The release puts Blockchain.com at more than 44 million confirmed accounts, over 70 jurisdictions, upward of 95 million wallets and $1.1 trillion in crypto transactions since 2011. The 44 million is the figure every outlet repeated. The Crypto Times is the only one that pauses on it, noting that a confirmed account is not an active user and that no active number was given. The Block describes the existing tokenized product as live across 30 European Economic Area countries plus Africa and South America, which counts something narrower than the 70 jurisdictions and is easy to read as the same thing. Citi Institute's base case of $5.5 trillion in tokenized assets by 2030 appears in the release and in two of the write-ups built on it.

"People shouldn't be limited in owning stocks based on where they happen to live or the brokerage and information they may or may not have access to," Blockchain.com executive chairman and chief executive Peter Smith said.

Where this sits after 17 September

The announcement lands six days after the SEC gave tokenized stock venues a five-year exemption from exchange registration, on condition the tokens carry the same rights as the shares behind them. Other exchange groups are further along than an MOU. Nasdaq put $100 million into Kraken's parent ahead of a 2027 launch, and Coinbase has had tokenized stocks live on Base for non-US users since August, a detail only Decrypt carried among the reports we read.

The market it would be joining

It is small. Cointelegraph puts the distributed value of tokenized stocks at $3.14 billion as of Wednesday, up 18% over 30 days, with holders at 3.87 million and up 72%. It names no dashboard, and nobody else we checked carried the figures, so both growth rates stand on one account. Reid Noch, vice president of US equity market structure at TD Securities, told Cointelegraph the differentiator is weekend trading, concentrated in retail-heavy names and around sudden news.

The gaps

Nothing in the announcement says when the ATS opens, who gets in, or what the two sides pay each other. Whether a user ends up holding a security or a derivative on one is also unaddressed, and The Crypto Times is alone in raising it. Blockchain.com already sells tokenized securities through a partnership with Ondo Finance covering more than 200 instruments, and no statement explains how the NYSE arrangement relates to that, or whether it replaces it. The SEC exemption runs five years. Neither company has said what it plans to do in the first of them.