Digital Asset Holdings, the New York-based company behind the institutional blockchain Canton Network, is in advanced talks to raise approximately $300 million at a valuation of around $2 billion, with Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto leading the round, Bloomberg reported Sunday.
Neither Digital Asset nor a16z has publicly confirmed the deal, and the final terms could still change before closing.
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On the surface, it reads like another crypto funding headline. It isn’t.
The Backbone of Wall Street You Don’t Notice—Until It Moves
To understand why this funding round matters, you have to start with one acronym: DTCC.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation sits quietly at the center of U.S. financial markets. It clears and settles trillions of dollars in trades every day and holds custody of more than $114 trillion in securities — roughly five times the size of the U.S. economy.
Every time a stock is bought or sold in America, DTCC is part of the process. It is not a startup testing new ideas. It is the system itself.And last year it chose Canton Network as its blockchain partner.
Wall Street Sets a 2026 Launch Horizon
Earlier in May, DTCC announced it would begin limited production trades of tokenized securities through its DTC unit in July 2026, followed by a full platform launch in October 2026.
The initiative involves more than 50 financial firms, including BlackRock and JPMorgan, and was greenlit by the SEC in December 2025 under a three-year pilot authorization covering highly liquid assets: Russell 1000 components, major index ETFs, and US Treasury securities.
Digital Asset, the developer of the Canton Network, serves as the primary blockchain infrastructure provider in the initiative.
Why $300 Million, Why Now
This is where the funding round snaps into focus, as it appears to be closely tied to an approaching implementation timeline rather than general growth conditions.
Digital Asset is raising capital that may be intended to support scaling engineering capacity, infrastructure build-out, and institutional integration ahead of DTCC’s planned transition to tokenized settlement.
The company has already raised over $485 million in prior rounds, including $135 million in June 2025 backed by Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities, and DTCC itself, followed by $50 million in December 2025 from BNY Mellon, Nasdaq, and S&P Global.
a16z, which recently closed a $2.2 billion Crypto Fund 5 focused on blockchain infrastructure, is now leading what is described as the largest single round in Digital Asset’s history.
$25 Billion vs. $114 Trillion: The Real Context of Tokenization
The entire tokenized real-world asset market today is valued at approximately $27 billion. DTCC custodies $114 trillion.
That is not an incremental upgrade to existing infrastructure; it is a potential 4,500x expansion of the tokenized asset landscape, executed by the very institution that already controls the underlying assets.
Moody’s credit rating agency has already deployed its ratings data directly on the Canton Network. Visa became Canton’s first payments Super Validator in March and integrated it into its stablecoin settlement pilot in April alongside Base and Polygon. Japan’s securities clearing corporation is testing government bonds on the network as digital collateral.
The Real Test Is Not Adoption—It’s Throughput
The $300 million raise, if confirmed, would support Digital Asset ahead of a defined rollout timeline for a major blockchain infrastructure initiative. A pilot is expected in July, with a launch targeted for October.
If those milestones hold, the focus may shift from whether Wall Street is moving toward crypto to whether crypto infrastructure can meet Wall Street’s scale and requirements.
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People Also Ask:
DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) is the main U.S. financial market infrastructure that clears, settles, and holds custody of most securities trades, including stocks, bonds, and ETFs.
Tokenization is the process of converting real-world assets like stocks, bonds, or real estate into digital tokens on a blockchain, allowing them to be traded and settled in a digital form while still representing the same underlying asset.
Canton Network is an institutional blockchain infrastructure designed for financial markets. It enables regulated institutions to tokenize, settle, and synchronize real-world financial assets while maintaining privacy and compliance requirements.
