Tradeweb executes real-time tokenized US Treasury trade

Tradeweb executed a real-time onchain trade of a tokenized U.S. Treasury over the Canton Network, with Franklin Templeton transferring the security to Virtu Financial in exchange for tokenized cash. The transaction settled in real time; the parties did not disclose the trade size.

Tradeweb handled execution and price discovery while the Canton Network synchronized settlement between the tokenized Treasury and a tokenized cash instrument. Tradeweb described the transaction as the industry’s first real-time purchase and sale of a tokenized U.S. Treasury settled against USDCx, a USDC-backed stablecoin issued on Canton. Participants included Blockdaemon, Digital Asset, Societe Generale, Franklin Templeton, Tradeweb and Virtu Financial.

The trade was carried out onchain, meaning exchange and settlement instructions were recorded and processed on distributed ledger technology rather than through traditional clearing systems. The parties reported that settlement was synchronized in real time, reducing the time between execution and final settlement compared with conventional post-trade processes. The firms did not provide further operational details or the exact timing of the transaction.

The transaction precedes the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s planned Tokenization Services, due to launch later this year. DTCC has said the service will allow market participants to tokenize selected stocks, exchange-traded funds and U.S. Treasury securities while maintaining investor protections and ownership rights that exist in traditional markets.

Franklin Templeton has expanded its activity in tokenized financial assets. Earlier this year the asset manager partnered with Binance to let institutions use tokenized money market fund shares as trading collateral while keeping the assets in regulated custody, and it worked with Ondo Finance to bring tokenized ETFs onto blockchain networks.

Public authorities and central banks have tested blockchain for bond issuance and settlement. Hong Kong issued its first digital green bond in 2023 and completed a third digital green bond issuance in November 2025 that raised HK$10 billion across four currencies. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has proposed building a digital asset platform to support issuance and settlement of tokenized bonds and to connect with regional tokenization platforms. The U.K. government engaged HSBC Orion to support a Digital Gilt Instrument pilot to test blockchain-based issuance, settlement and secondary trading of government bonds.

Market data shows tokenized U.S. Treasury products amount to about $14.6 billion onchain across multiple issuers and platforms. The Tradeweb-Canton trade adds to a growing number of institutional experiments using tokenized securities and stablecoins for settlement.