At long last, the guardians of traditional finance have admitted the obvious: the future of securities lies on-chain. Nasdaq’s application to the SEC to list and trade tokenized U.S. stocks and exchange-traded products is not a gimmick. It is the most significant step Wall Street has taken toward legitimizing the digital infrastructure that crypto builders have been perfecting for over a decade. For years, tokenization was dismissed as a fever dream of crypto maximalists. Now the world’s second-largest exchange wants in.
Nasdaq’s plan is deliberately cautious. Tokenized securities will carry the same CUSIPs, the same voting rights, and the same dividend streams as their paper-era counterparts. They will still clear and settle through the DTC. To critics, this looks like little more than a marketing exercise: blockchain without the disintermediation, without the instant settlement, without the disruption. But the critics miss the point. Once assets are represented digitally, the direction of travel is irreversible. Tokenization isn’t about winning every battle in 2026. It’s about planting the flag for the new financial order.
The genius here is strategic. Nasdaq has framed tokenization as continuity, not rupture. That framing secures regulatory blessing. But once the SEC approves tokenized securities as materially identical to their analogues, the precedent is locked in: digital representations of stocks are legitimate, tradable, and regulated. From that moment, the real innovation begins. Settlement cycles will shorten. Custody models will shift. Intermediaries will thin out. Tokenization will seep deeper into the system, no matter how carefully Nasdaq pretends otherwise at the outset.
Crypto evangelists should see this for what it is: the first crack in the fortress. For decades, the clearing and custody monopolies of Wall Street have been untouchable, defended as pillars of market stability. Tokenization shatters that logic. If ownership can be proven, transferred, and recorded on a blockchain, the rationale for armies of middlemen evaporates. Nasdaq is effectively admitting that the future efficiency of markets depends on crypto-native infrastructure. They just don’t dare say it out loud—yet.
Context matters. This move comes as Washington pivots under President Trump toward a far friendlier crypto policy. Coinbase is already pushing the SEC for permission to offer tokenized equities. The administration is leaning into tokenization as a geopolitical weapon: the dollar will re-dominate global markets not through central bank coercion, but by exporting digital dollar rails that every investor can plug into. Nasdaq’s application sits squarely in that strategy. This isn’t a side experiment. It is part of the re-dollarization agenda.
The old refrain that “blockchain is a solution in search of a problem” collapses under the weight of this proposal. Tokenization answers the most basic problems of finance: efficiency, transparency, and accessibility. Imagine equities that can settle instantly, be transferred 24/7 across borders, and be integrated into smart contracts that automate compliance, tax, or corporate actions. That is the horizon toward which tokenization points. Nasdaq is taking the first, timid step, but the destination is unmistakable.
Doubters will sneer that nothing changes if the DTC still holds the keys. But history shows how quickly cosmetic experiments become systemic revolutions. Electronic trading began as a parallel system that mimicked the old floor model. Within a decade, the floors were shuttered. Tokenized securities may start life as carbon copies of paper stocks, but once the architecture is live, the innovation will accelerate beyond Nasdaq’s control.
The significance is not in what tokenized trading looks like on day one. The significance is that Wall Street’s gatekeepers have been forced to concede that tokenization belongs in the heart of the system. That concession ends the long war between “crypto” and “tradfi” in theory, even if the battles in practice continue.
Nasdaq’s filing is less a dress rehearsal than an opening night. The script has been written by crypto builders since 2009. Now the incumbents are finally stepping onto the stage. They can posture, they can cling to their clearing houses, they can insist that nothing fundamental is changing. But once securities are on-chain, the game is over. Tokenization isn’t coming. It’s here.
Bepi Pezzulli is a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England & Wales and a foreign policy scholar. He is a member of Advance UK’s College and a councillor of the Great British PAC. He tweets at @bepipezzulli.
Image from Grok.