The institution that settles every stock trade in America is launching its tokenisation service this month — $114 trillion in assets on-chain. This is not a pilot anymore. This is Wall Street’s infrastructure moving to the blockchain. Joining me is Misha Putiatin, Co-Founder of Symbiotic, a collateral markets platform backed by Pantera and Coinbase Ventures. Misha, welcome to the show. The DTCC is launching its tokenisation service this month. Why does that matter beyond the headline?
It is really important to see what that actually brings. DTCC is basically the source of truth for the entire public market. It stores the information on who actually owns the public asset, who can vote, who can transfer it, who can basically track the ownership. Before that, we had assets that were tracking public assets on blockchain — tokenisation existed, but the actual assets were just tracking the price and not transferring actual ownership. This move is a bridge between traditional finance and crypto. Now you can build any infrastructure on top of it — DeFi, credit facilities, 24/7 trading. You will get a sustained base to operate over and to develop on.
$114 trillion in assets on-chain — what actually changes in practice on the ground?
It is not going to be 114 immediately. It actually needs to get permission for Russell 1000 and other indexes — so it is not all of them. But as I mentioned, we will actually have a direct ownership scheme. DTCC is launching their own chain to track assets and to store information. Every compliant public ecosystem — be it Ethereum, Solana, or something else in the future — can use the source of information from the SEC to prove ownership and facilitate trading and authorisation.
You have argued that issuance alone creates nothing. What has to happen after a token is issued for it to actually be useful?
Some people have said that illiquid assets can come on-chain and become liquid all of a sudden — but the same rules apply. What blockchain actually does and why it is so efficient are always two things: democratising access and streamlining. For me to use my stock portfolio as collateral to get credit for operational needs or to lever up, I need to go to one broker or one bank and get bid on the terms. With blockchain, I can get 25 offers in one go and get myself a credit line in seconds, not several weeks. That is the streamlining. And it is algorithmic — I do not have to make calls or write emails.
There is $300 trillion in high quality liquid assets globally but only 10% used as collateral. How does tokenisation change that?
The crypto industry has been collateralising highly volatile assets for six years now. Before the mass adoption we have right now and before we started to merge with traditional finance, crypto developed a lot of tooling for illiquid or hard-to-price assets to be used as collateral. The unlock comes from being able to price them properly, price the risk properly, and use them as a collateral tool to fund other activities at the same time.
Symbiotic built liquid lanes so tokenised fund holders get instant liquidity without waiting weeks to redeem. How does that work?
As soon as you tokenise, you can get a set of risk curators — native to blockchain or coming from institutions — to provide instant liquidity. It behaves like a standby credit facility. When a user wants to redeem early — to unwind a leveraged position or free up capital to deploy somewhere else — they can pay a small premium and get immediate liquidity for assets that have redemption windows of 30 days. It is beneficial to both players.
Where can institutional capital from the Gulf participate in this market right now?
The offers range from private equity and private credit to money market funds and something as complex as insurance, reinsurance, and capital-intensive structures. Regulators here were actually at the forefront — this is the place where the first compliant real estate tokenisation happened. We have AGI chains and other initiatives handling hundreds of millions of dirhams in remittances. The more regulatory clarity we have, the easier it is for institutions to come along. And the DTCC is actually a good indicator of that.
BlackRock, Goldman, and JP Morgan are all in the DTCC working group. Does that give you confidence or concern?
Confidence. 100%. This is a good group to be in. After we had some things with the Clarity Act not passing and general concerns, I think it is a good signal for the industry that the shift is already happening and the biggest players in worldwide finance are coming on board.
Five years from now — what does the global collateral market look like?
We start with simple things — money market funds, public assets, things already available to wider audiences. The more we move, the more we bring out the streamlining effect of blockchain. Moving from general assets toward things that were only available to back offices of big family offices and sovereign wealth funds — credit tranches, reinsurance contracts, partial ownership of real estate. The deeper we go, the more flexibility a family office has to structure their portfolio exactly the way they want it.
Thank you so much for being here with us today Misha.
Thank you for having me.
