Wall Street’s Biggest Move to Blockchain Begins—With Limits

One promise of the blockchain is that it could simplify the behind-the-scenes work of stock trades on Wall Street. That vision is due for its first real-world test in the coming days, when market infrastructure giant the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. plans to demonstrate live trades of stocks and other assets on the blockchain.

Still, the exercise will be modest. After years of work by the biggest U.S. clearinghouse to bring assets onto the blockchain, the event on Wednesday this week is expected to involve one day of limited production trades of stocks, U.S. Treasuries, and other assets, not a broad rollout, the DTCC confirmed. Market participants still point to the technology’s limits in large-scale trading, and the DTCC says using the blockchain would be too costly to settle the tens of trillions of dollars in daily activity of the U.S. stock market.