Morgan Stanley now considers the opening quarter of 2027 a more achievable timeframe to enable tokenized equities on its alternative trading system (ATS), according to Amy Oldenburg, the institution’s head of digital asset strategy.
During a discussion with The Block at Token2049, Oldenburg noted that the bank’s group is actively building the necessary infrastructure and anticipates being ready to accommodate the activity by Q1. She characterized that schedule as more realistic than the second half of 2026 timeframe she had previously suggested in March.
“We need product in order to be able to support them within the ATS,” Oldenburg stated. “And the client demand really isn’t there because the product doesn’t exist. So we just need a little more time to pass.”
The Morgan Stanley official highlighted the DTCC’s upcoming tokenization service rollout at the end of this month as a major milestone that could stimulate greater market engagement. She additionally pointed to the GENIUS Act taking effect in January as another occurrence the company is closely monitoring.
“For us, but also for clients, it’s pretty hard for anyone on the institutional side to engage,” Oldenburg mentioned. “Permissibility from the Fed is also [a factor] with Clarity not going through. It’s okay that it didn’t go through, but we do need to just tighten up some of the other elements of Clarity that are still less defined for traditional organizations.”
Oldenburg remarked that facilitating tokenized equities via its ATS, which pairs orders outside of conventional exchanges like the Nasdaq, aligns with the company’s objective of “raising, allocating, and managing capital onchain while helping clients navigate a hybrid world.”
The corporation already provides clients direct equities, derivatives, and swaps through that exact framework and views tokenization as a natural continuation of that structure, she said. Staying vehicle-agnostic permits the bank to assist clients who might maintain positions across both legacy and onchain environments.
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‘Securitization of everything’
This forms part of Morgan Stanley’s initiatives to broaden its clients’ access onchain. The organization is designing proprietary wallet infrastructure that is not non-custodial but engineered to be abstracted away from users while allowing them to maintain tokenized holdings and instruments.
Independently, Morgan Stanley recently set up a Digital Asset Lab to examine blockchain and crypto-native technologies required to back upcoming products, rather than the offerings themselves. Oldenburg noted that the lab offers a secure setting where the enterprise can evaluate risks and opportunities prior to any deployment into production.
“If it’s perpetuals, prediction markets, any of these newer products, I’m not saying that we’re going to do any of those, but if the clients are interested, if the consumer wants them, and there’s an opportunity there, we have to be able to support those,” Oldenburg clarified.
The bank also secured conditional clearance from the OCC earlier this year to establish a digital trust to hold or stake digital assets on behalf of its customers.
Addressing further expansion sectors in tokenization, Oldenburg stated that operationally intricate fields, such as private shares, structured notes, bespoke products, and private fund access, represent near-term prospects, where blockchain can minimize paperwork and administrative overhead. Once a greater volume of assets becomes tokenized, she noted, questions emerge regarding utilizing them as collateral. She defined this progression as “the securitization of everything.”
When questioned about forecasts predicting the tokenized real-world asset market will hit $3 trillion to $10 trillion, Oldenburg replied, “We’ll definitely be within that range without question.”
“Even in the last 12 months, everyone has just been going crazy with announcements,” Oldenburg told The Block. “Energy drives energy across our industry. There’s a lot of FOMO in the institutional space.”
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/markets/2026-10-12-morgan-stanley-tokenized-equities-q1-2027-418256.
