🎙️ Ep. 67. NYSE to Tokenize Stocks for 24/7 Trading

If you're reading this and still haven't signed up, click the subscribe button below!

On Episode 67 of Tokenized, Simon Taylor and Cuy Sheffield are joined by Jess Houlgrave, CEO of WalletConnect. Jess leads the network connecting over 700 wallets and 80,000 applications with standardized messaging, and recently launched WalletConnect Pay - a stablecoin checkout solution now powering in-store payments through a partnership with Ingenico.

The New York Stock Exchange is building tokenized rails, and it's not just for show. ICE's announcement of a tokenized securities platform supporting 24/7 trading, instant settlement and stablecoin funding marks a defining moment for capital markets infrastructure and signals that 2026 is shaping up as the year every major exchange makes its move.

🎙️Listen to the full episode here on your favorite podcast app or 📷 watch on YouTube.

We cover:

• Why NYSE's tokenized securities platform signals a major infrastructure shift

• How different approaches to "tokenized securities" actually vary in ownership structure

• WalletConnect Pay's Ingenico partnership bringing stablecoin payments to 40M+ terminals

• The QR vs. NFC debate for in-store stablecoin checkout

• Privacy requirements for both institutional trading and retail payments

• Gusto and Zerohash enabling stablecoin payroll for international contractors

• What institutional adoption actually looks like now that it's here

NYSE Signals a Capital Markets Infrastructure Shift

ICE's new platform will support 24/7 trading, instant settlement, fractional share trading, dollar-denominated order sizing, and stablecoin-based funding. Critically, it will handle both tokenized shares that are fungible with traditionally issued securities and natively digitally issued securities. The parent company is also working with BNY and Citi to support tokenized deposits across clearing houses.

As Cuy Sheffield observed: "2026 is the year of capital markets, and every week there is a new major announcement around something related to tokenized equities. You have DTCC, you've got NASDAQ, you've got New York Stock Exchange. Every major player in traditional securities is clearly making big bets - and not just innovation POCs."

Sheffield also framed the broader shift: "We've changed our mindset from let's onboard people to crypto to let's build things that are actually going to be used by the traditional capital markets."

Jess Houlgrave added context on what's enabling this moment: "Until now, there's been a bunch of pieces missing. We solved the scale and the speed piece a while ago, but things like privacy are obviously really important. Nobody wants their trades visible. Nobody wants their order book being able to be messed with.”

 The Tokenized Securities Spectrum Is Wider Than You Think

Simon Taylor laid out a useful framework for understanding the various approaches now flooding the market.

At the "most extreme ownership end" are direct issuers like Superstate and Figure, where holding the token is "direct ownership of the stock certificate." The next tier down offers legal rights without custody - the model most traditional brokerages use today. Further along the spectrum: SPV wrappers (you own stock in a fund that owns the stock) and derivative contracts offering price exposure with no legal ownership.

What NYSE appears to be saying is they'll support backward compatibility with what DTCC is doing, as well as new direct issuance methods - covering as many of these models as possible.

Stablecoin Payments Go Physical

WalletConnect's partnership with Ingenico puts stablecoin checkout on over 40 million point-of-sale terminals - starting with direct merchant rollouts in Paris and France.

Houlgrave identified three personas driving early adoption:

• Digital nomads in international hubs (Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Mexico City) being paid in stablecoins and wanting to spend them

• Consumers in high stablecoin-adoption markets with fragmented payment systems and low card penetration

• High-value transaction environments - luxury hospitality where card limits top out but bottle service doesn't

On the QR vs. NFC question, Houlgrave was pragmatic: "Cracking the NFC experience is going to be really important over the long term for the success of payments overall using these rails." In Asia, QR remains familiar; in the US and Europe, tap-to-pay is best in class.

Privacy: The Missing Layer for Both Capital Markets and Retail

Cuy Sheffield raised a point that applies across both institutional trading and retail payments: if I connect my wallet to pay at a merchant, they can see my entire transaction history, and everyone can see the merchant's revenue.

Houlgrave's response highlighted both off-chain and on-chain solutions. "We deal with that on the WalletConnect Pay side today through things like rotational addresses," she said, while noting that private chains like Canton and emerging FHE (fully homomorphic encryption) solutions will mature over time.

Simon Taylor offered a useful reframe: "Nobody's expecting complete anonymity. They do expect the regulator to exist, but they expect commercial confidentiality."

Stablecoin Payroll: Progress on the Edges

Gusto's partnership with Zerohash for stablecoin contractor payouts represents progress. But Cuy Sheffield noted we're still not at full payroll replacement: "If the stablecoin issuers aren't paying 100% of their salaries in stablecoins, then why would anybody else?"

The contractor use case, however, is compelling. Simon Taylor cited internal analysis suggesting "somewhere between 60 and 80% lower cost for those payouts" compared to correspondent banking rails, especially for long-tail markets where transfers take 3-7 days.

Institutional Adoption: The Dog Caught the Car

Superstate's $82.5 million Series B, led by Bain Capital Crypto with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, underscores momentum for SEC-registered digital share issuance.

But as Houlgrave observed with characteristic clarity: "What institutional adoption means doesn't mean insanely fast adoption of everything you've ever wanted. It means slow adoption of stuff that actually works and is compliant."

Cuy Sheffield offered a useful frame: "The dog caught the car... You have a very sophisticated set of actors who have deep distribution, have very different product requirements than what a lot of companies of the crypto ecosystem are used to."

Looking Ahead

The direction is clear: major capital markets infrastructure is now actively building on tokenized rails, stablecoin payments are finding real-world distribution, and privacy solutions are becoming table stakes. As Simon Taylor put it: "2025 was Euro stablecoins and tokenized money market funds. It's now the other RWAs that are really coming into focus."

The question isn't whether institutions are adopting blockchain infrastructure - it's whether crypto-native companies can adapt fast enough to meet their requirements.

Thanks so much for reading the Tokenized Newsletter!

Please share this edition or share it with your colleagues if you enjoyed it!

Disclaimers