The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the leading US clearinghouse for securities transactions, has pledged to support Ethereum's ERC-3643 standard for permissioned securities tokens. In a March 20 announcement, the DTCC confirmed its membership in the ERC3643 Association—a nonprofit organization focused on driving the adoption of this token standard—with the mission of "promoting and advancing the ERC3643 token standard."

This move signals growing acceptance among US regulators for tokenization, following President Donald Trump's commitment to establish America as the "world’s crypto capital." It also indicates that the Ethereum blockchain may play a key role in developing a permissioned security token framework in the US.

"DTCC will help lead the future of tokenization and support institutional adoption at scale," said Dennis O’Connell, president of the ERC3643 Association.

Source: ERC3643.org

As a private organization under close SEC oversight, DTCC is responsible for settling most US securities transactions, having processed transactions totaling $3 quadrillion in 2023, according to its annual report.

Also referred to as the T-REX Protocol, ERC-3643 is an "open-source suite of smart contracts that enables the issuance, management, and transfer of permissioned tokens—even on permissionless blockchains," as described on the ERC3643 Association's website. The standard uses a specialized decentralized identity protocol to ensure that only eligible users can hold tokens.

DTCC has been a trailblazer among US financial institutions in adopting blockchain technology, having experimented with on-chain securities transactions. Its initiatives include testing the settlement of tokenized US Treasury Bills on the Canton Network and exploring private asset tokenization on an Avalanche subnet. In February, DTCC launched ComposerX, a platform aimed at simplifying token creation and settlement for regulated US financial institutions. Additionally, in November, the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) indicated its intent to investigate similar blockchain-based settlement solutions for the derivatives markets.