Two financial giants lay out the on-chain schedule for Ethereum, Wall Street still needs a "rollback" button.

If you have ever bought a stock and assumed that you “owned” it as soon as you hit the confirm button, then you have touched upon the least glamorous part of the financial market: settlement – clearing (settlement).

Settlement is the backend process that ensures that the buyer's money and the seller's securities are truly exchanged definitively, irreversibly, and without loss. This is where the system checks whether everything has been matched, whether the money has arrived in the account, whether the collateral is in the right place, and all intermediaries operating that machine agree that the transaction has been completed.

So far, the market still spends a significant amount of time each day waiting for the ledger to reconcile, waiting for money to arrive, waiting for assets to be recorded, and waiting for intermediaries to confirm the finality of transactions.

Tokenization has long been promoted as a solution to shorten this “downtime”, but for many years, it has still faced a fundamental question that has not been fully answered.

When stocks are put on-chain, how will the core infrastructure of the market handle the official bookkeeping? And what will the “cash leg” of the transaction look like when it must behave like closely managed money, rather than a stablecoin that primarily operates on trust?

CryptoSlate previously separated two pieces of news: the SEC staff's “no-action” letter regarding DTCC's tokenization service, and the potential to shorten the payment cycle; it also analyzed JPMorgan's MONY fund as an effort to redefine the concept of “cash on-chain” for capital that has gone through KYC.

This analysis retains the facts but connects the two stories together, as it is precisely at that intersection that the value for the reader truly emerges.

DTCC is looking for ways to make the ownership of tokenized securities more “readable” for the payment system that already operates in the U.S. Meanwhile, JPMorgan is trying to make on-chain cash more “acceptable” for traditional liquidity managers.

When placing these two efforts side by side, the picture begins to become clearer: it is not “everything will go on the blockchain tomorrow,” but rather a narrow path, friendly to banks and brokerage firms, where cash-like tokens and DTC-recognized ownership rights can meet, without pretending that legal regulations do not exist.

What does DTCC pilot: who is recorded, not where the token is located

DTCC stands for Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation – the backbone infrastructure behind the entire post-trade process in the US market.

DTC (The Depository Trust Company) is a subsidiary of DTCC, serving as the central securities depository for the majority of stocks, ETFs, and U.S. Treasury bonds. This is where the final positions of Wall Street are recorded and settled.

It is important to correctly understand what DTC is doing, as news headlines can easily cause misunderstandings.

DTC is the official “scoreboard” that records the positions of major market participants in the depository system. Most individual investors only access DTC indirectly, through their brokerage firms.

The brokerage firm is a member of DTC; while the investor is a customer at the lower tier, with their position reflected on the broker's books.

The SEC staff's no-action letter is essentially an informal approval for a limited-duration implementation phase, accompanied by a reporting requirement, while the underlying securities remain in DTC's current custody system.

This letter pertains to the “preliminary base version” of the tokenization service proposed by DTC: a mechanism that allows representing the positions currently custodied by DTC in the form of tokens, and allows those tokens to move between approved blockchain addresses, while DTC continues to monitor all fluctuations to ensure its records remain the sole source of truth.

This is not a new securities issuance regime, nor is it an attempt to rewrite the capitalization table in a crypto-native way.

In other words, DTC allows the “representative layer” to move on-chain while still maintaining the official legal records within traditional payment infrastructure.

The key concept here is “entitlement” - the right to be recognized.

In this model, the token is not intended to replace the legal definition of securities in the U.S. It is a controlled digital representation of a position that a DTC member has owned, designed to be able to move on the blockchain infrastructure, while the DTC always knows who is being recorded and whether the transaction is valid.

It is the new constraints that make this model feasible in the regulated market.

Tokens are only allowed to be transferred to “Registered Wallets” – registered wallets. DTC has stated that they will publish a list of permitted public and private ledgers, where members can register their wallet addresses.

In the preliminary version, the service does not lock the market into a single blockchain or a fixed set of smart contracts.

The no-action letter describes the “objective, neutral, and transparent” criteria of the DTC regarding supported blockchains and tokenization protocols. These criteria are intended to ensure that tokens only move to registered wallets, and the DTC can intervene when it is necessary to reverse transactions, including cases of misrecording, lost tokens, or fraudulent activities.

The very language of this reversibility makes tokenization within the management framework sound more like the operation of a real market, rather than a crypto slogan.

A market infrastructure cannot operate core services if it lacks the ability to control or rectify mistakes.

Therefore, this pilot is built on the assumption that tokens can move quickly, but must still remain within a sufficiently tight governance framework to handle errors and meet legal realities.

DTC even describes mechanisms to avoid “double spend”, including a structure where securities recorded in a digital omnibus account cannot be transferred until the corresponding token is burned.

In other words, DTC wants to ensure that the traditional ledger and the token layer are tightly integrated, so that there are no “duplicate copies” of the same ownership.

The list of eligible assets is also deliberately selected: very boring. And it is precisely this boredom that helps the infrastructure to exist.

DTCC's announcement refers to highly liquid assets such as Russell 1000 stocks, ETFs based on major indices, as well as Treasury bills, bonds, and U.S. Treasury securities.

In other words, the pilot starts in areas with deep liquidity, where the operational conventions are clear, and mistakes will not lead to systemic chaos.

The public roadmap of DTCC indicates that the earliest practical deployment will be in the second half of 2026, with a no-action letter allowing tokenization services to operate on approved blockchains for a period of three years.

This three-year period is essentially a real countdown clock: long enough to onboard members, test controls, and prove durability, but short enough for all parties to understand that they are being evaluated.

JPMorgan's MONY: the missing piece – on-chain cash but still “up to standard”

Even if DTC operates smoothly with tokenized ownership, tokenization is still incomplete if cash cannot behave similarly.

That is why MONY has become important, but not because it is a novel yield structure.

MONY is important because it is a cash management product designed to exist on Ethereum, without pretending that this environment is permissionless.

Previous analysis by CryptoSlate has indicated that MONY is not a DeFi experiment, but an effort to redefine “cash on-chain” for large capital flows that have undergone KYC.

JPMorgan's announcement clearly describes the structure: MONY is a private placement fund under regulation 506©, available for accredited investors, distributed through Morgan Money. Investors receive tokens directly at their blockchain address.

The fund only invests in traditional U.S. Treasury securities and fully collateralized repo contracts backed by U.S. Treasuries, allowing for daily dividend reinvestment, and allowing for buyback registration using cash or stablecoin through Morgan Money.

In simple terms, this is the familiar promise of a money market fund – high liquidity, short-term, low risk – but packaged as a token that can move on public infrastructure.

For those who are not familiar: a money market fund is where large flows of money “park temporarily” to earn short-term interest without accepting much risk. “Cash” in the modern market is essentially a claim against a basket of short-term government instruments.

MONY is exactly that, but tokenized so it can be held and transferred in a blockchain environment, according to the product's rules, without turning each transfer into a manual process.

This is the key point.

On-chain cash tools have primarily been stablecoins: very good at existing everywhere, but not suitable for the preferred “parking” role of the treasury when interest rates are high and idle balances are large.

MONY does not require customers to choose sides in the culture war.

It provides what treasuries are used to buying, but in a more portable form with fewer cut-off points and less reason for delays.

The fund is initiated with a scale of 100 million USD, targeting high-net-worth individuals and institutions, with a high minimum investment requirement – ensuring it is fully within the accredited investor segment.

This detail shows that the first wave of “tokenized finance” is not aimed at retail, but at balance sheets that have already existed in the world of compliance and custody.

MONY is a cash management system for those who already have a robust treasury policy framework.

When two pieces meet: the picture of 2026

Connecting MONY with DTCC's pilot, the direction for 2026 is clearly visible.

DTCC is developing a mechanism that allows tokenized entitlements to move across supported ledgers, while DTC continues to monitor and officially record them.

JPMorgan brought a yield-generating instrument, backed by U.S. Treasury, to Ethereum, allowing it to be held in the form of a token and – within a limited transferability scope – to be moved peer-to-peer and used more broadly as collateral in the blockchain environment.

This is when the question “when will it appear in my broker account?” begins to have an answer.

The initial impacts are likely not blue-chip stocks tokenized for retail investors.

Instead, there will be pieces that brokers and treasuries can apply without rewriting the entire system: cash sweep products can move under clearer rules, and collateral can be repositioned within permitted spaces, with lower operational delays.

DTCC plans to begin implementation in the second half of 2026 – a timeline anchor for large intermediaries to integrate tokenized entitlements.

The sequence is almost self-written, as the motivation and constraints align with each other.

The organization will approach first, as they can register wallets, integrate custody, and accept the whitelist along with an audit trail.

Retail will come later, primarily through the broker interface – where the blockchain is “hidden”, just like how the clearinghouse has always been hidden from end users.

The more interesting question is not whether the infrastructure exists or not.

But who is allowed to use it, and which assets deserve to be moved first, when every transaction still has to go through compliance, custody, and operational control – things that do not care how modern your smart contract looks.

Tokenization has long been sold at speed.

DTCC and JPMorgan are selling something narrower, but more reliable: a way for securities and cash to meet in the middle without breaking the rules that keep the market running.

DTCC's pilot states that entitlements can be transferred, but only among registered members, on supported ledgers, with built-in reversibility.

MONY stated that the on-chain cash tool can be profitable and exist on Ethereum, but still remains within the confines of a managed fund, sold to qualified investors via the banking platform.

If this model is successful, winning will not mean that everything rushes onto the blockchain.

But it is a gradual realization that the “dead time” between “money” and “securities” has been considered a feature for decades – and in fact, it does not necessarily have to exist.

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