Morgan Stanley will launch tokenized equities on its alternative trading system in the first quarter of 2027, according to Amy Oldenburg, the bank's head of digital asset strategy. The timeline represents a revision from an earlier target of the second half of 2026.
Oldenburg forecast a tokenized market worth between $3 trillion and $10 trillion by 2030 in an interview with The Block. That range accounts for the scale institutional capital managers now assign to onchain asset issuance and settlement. Morgan Stanley's entry into tokenized equities through its ATS, a private trading venue for institutional clients, would give the bank's alternative asset managers direct access to blockchain infrastructure for buying and selling securities without traditional intermediaries.
Alternative trading systems operate outside exchanges and are regulated separately by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Morgan Stanley's ATS currently handles equities, fixed income, and derivatives for hedge funds and other institutional clients. Tokenizing assets on such a system would allow Morgan Stanley clients to hold and trade securities as blockchain tokens, a mechanism that eliminates certain custodial intermediaries and can settle trades in minutes rather than days.
Oldenburg attributed the push toward tokenization to institutional demand. "A lot of FOMO in the institutional space," she said, referring to fear of missing out. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and Fidelity have all announced tokenization initiatives since 2023. Fidelity opened a digital assets division in 2021; BlackRock launched a cryptocurrency ETF in 2024; JPMorgan operates a stablecoin for institutional settlements on its Liinks platform.
Morgan Stanley's Q1 2027 target comes as tokenized real-world assets have grown to roughly $13 billion in on-chain value by mid-2026, up from under $1 billion at the start of the year. Ondo Finance, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, and Pimco have each launched or expanded blockchain-native investment products. The category remains small relative to traditional capital markets, which trade tens of trillions daily, but adoption among wealth managers and asset owners continues to accelerate.
Morgan Stanley did not specify whether the ATS would initially support all equity classes or a subset. An ATS launch would sidestep the need for Morgan Stanley to operate a full exchange, which requires separate SEC registration and stricter rules around price formation and access.
The $3 trillion to $10 trillion forecast for 2030 implies that tokenized assets could represent 2 to 7 percent of global equities market capitalization by that date, depending on the outcome. If Morgan Stanley's ATS becomes operational and processes even a fraction of its institutional client volume in tokenized form, the platform's liquidity could set a pricing benchmark for the emerging onchain settlement layer.
The number to watch is whether Morgan Stanley delivers the Q1 2027 ATS launch as stated and, if so, how many of its institutional clients elect to settle trades through it in the first six months.
