The DTCC, which oversees custody of roughly $114 trillion in assets through its subsidiary DTC, launched the working group on May 4 with more than 50 member firms spanning traditional finance and crypto. Named participants include Bank of America, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, NYSE Group, Robinhood, Ondo Finance, Circle, Ripple Prime, Kraken (Payward), Anchorage Digital, BNP Paribas, Citi, HSBC, UBS, Wells Fargo, State Street, Fireblocks, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, and the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange, among others. Mirae Asset's US unit is among the participants headquartered outside the United States and Europe, though the full geographic composition of the 50-plus membership has not been publicly enumerated.

What the Working Group Is Actually Building

The DTCC's tokenization service will run on the Canton Network, a blockchain infrastructure built by Digital Asset. The service received legal clearance in December 2025 through an SEC no-action letter, which authorized tokenization of Russell 1000 equities, major ETFs, and US Treasury securities for a three-year period. Limited live production trades are scheduled to begin in July 2026, with a full service launch set for October 2026.

A meaningful distinction separates this service from existing tokenized equity products. Platforms like Ondo Finance's global markets arm and Kraken's xStocks product offer synthetic exposure to US equities, structured as loans backed by the underlying securities. The DTCC's tokenized stocks will carry full direct ownership rights, as the underlying assets remain in DTC custody.

DTCC President and CEO Frank La Salla framed the moment in a statement: "Our vision is coming to fruition: launching our tokenization service and successfully bridging TradFi and DeFi." Brian Steele, who heads Clearing and Securities Services at DTCC, added that "DTC's tokenization service is designed to provide systemic scale where deep liquidity already lives." Nadine Chakar, Managing Director and Global Head of Digital Assets at DTCC, offered the initiative's broader rationale: "Tokenization is an important and critical step toward building tomorrow's digital infrastructure."

Mirae's Broader Digital Asset Push

For Mirae Asset, this is one piece of a larger international digital asset buildout the firm refers to internally as "Mirae Asset 3.0." In early 2026, Mirae became the first Korean financial institution to issue blockchain-based bonds, raising approximately 100 billion won (roughly $71.5 million) denominated in Hong Kong dollars and US dollars through HSBC's Orion tokenization platform, with the bonds connected to Hong Kong's Central Moneymarkets Unit (CMU). In February, the firm agreed to acquire South Korean crypto exchange Korbit for $92 million to expand into domestic retail digital asset trading. In April, Mirae's Hong Kong unit secured approval from the Securities and Futures Commission to offer retail digital asset trading services, becoming the first Korean brokerage to hold such a license in Hong Kong.

Mirae Asset Group Chairman Park Hyeon-joo has described the firm's goal as building a digital asset investment grid that connects the world by tokenizing all assets across the group, spanning traditional, alternative, and digital holdings.

Mirae's role within the DTCC working group centers on tokenized real-world assets including US Treasuries and equities, with a particular focus on investor protection standards and interoperability infrastructure.

Why This Matters Outside the United States

South Korea's National Assembly amended its Capital Markets Act and Electronic Securities Act in January 2026 to legally recognize tokenized securities, also permitting qualified issuers to issue security tokens directly on blockchain networks, with full market operation targeted for January 2027. Mirae's participation in the DTCC group gives the firm direct exposure to the standards being written for the world's largest capital market, at the same moment Korea is writing its own.

For Asian retail investors, this matters in practical terms. If DTCC's infrastructure matures as planned, it could provide a pathway for Korean and broader Asian investors to access tokenized US equities with genuine ownership rights rather than synthetic proxies. Mirae's concurrent Hong Kong retail trading license, set to go live as a mobile platform in June 2026, is positioned to serve that exact demand.

For South Asian markets, the implications extend further. India's Securities and Exchange Board has been actively exploring distributed ledger technology for securities settlement, and the Non-Resident Indian investor community represents one of the largest pools of retail capital with sustained interest in US equity exposure. The International Monetary Fund has framed tokenized finance as a tool for cross-border settlement efficiency, a concern central to South Asian markets that face meaningful friction in accessing global capital markets directly. Pakistan and Bangladesh face similar structural barriers, and the broader South Asian diaspora investor base stands to benefit materially if institutional tokenization infrastructure lowers the cost and complexity of cross-border equity access.

For African markets, the model carries a different kind of relevance. Africa's tokenization market is projected to reach $100 billion in 2026, according to PwC, while crypto adoption across the continent grew 52 percent year over year. The Nairobi Securities Exchange is actively developing the Kenya Digital Exchange to trade tokenized real-world assets. The DTCC's approach, assembling 50-plus institutions under a single working group to establish settlement and custody standards ahead of launch, is the institutional template African exchanges aspire to replicate. Mirae's participation illustrates that firms headquartered outside the traditional US and European financial centers can hold formal roles in shaping that template.

On-Chain Context

Tokenized real-world assets excluding stablecoins reached approximately $27.5 billion to $29 billion on-chain at the end of Q1 2026, up 263 percent year over year from $7.9 billion, according to Investax. Tokenized US Treasuries account for $13.4 billion of that total. Tokenized equities stand at roughly $960 million, more than double the $424 million recorded in mid-2025, with Ondo Finance controlling around 60 percent of that market. The DTCC's October launch, if it achieves meaningful volume, would represent a structural expansion of the tokenized equity category well beyond its current scale.

Open questions remain around interoperability. The Canton Network has not demonstrated native interoperability with Ethereum or Solana, and no bridging strategy has been publicly detailed. That gap represents a material challenge for DeFi protocols that want to integrate institutional-grade tokenized equities into their liquidity pools.