Goldman Sachs CEO Backs Tokenization as Trading Growth, Citing 2022 GS DAP Platform

Solomon Rebuffs the Revenue Threat

Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon used the bank's third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, October 13, to argue that tokenization will enlarge its trading business rather than shrink it. Asked whether tokenization, decentralized finance and prediction markets could eat into the firm's trading revenue, Solomon rejected the premise and reached back almost 50 years, to the arrival of electronic stock trading, which raised the same worries about Wall Street desks at the time; Goldman adapted then, and its equities business grew. “The developments are obviously creating more products, greater activity, potentially new clients, broader distribution channels,” he told analysts. Tokenization, the practice of recording financial and real-world assets on a blockchain so they can move and trade around the clock, sits at the center of that case, and Solomon argued it could raise trading volume, cut costs and automate transactions. The infrastructure is already built: the bank launched its GS DAP tokenization platform in 2022 and has since worked on tokenized bonds, money market funds and real estate. In July it joined a half-day run of a tokenization service from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the utility that handles much of the plumbing behind U.S. securities markets and processes quadrillions of dollars of transactions each year, and Goldman is now weighing how to use that service at larger scale. Solomon still sized today's business cautiously: “I'd say the activity so far is small and at the margin.”

Wells Fargo's Two-Minute Rail

Wells Fargo is further along than its peers, and its figures are the most concrete to come out of this week's calls. Chief financial officer Michael Santomassimo said the bank's tokenized deposits are already moving cross-border payments in production, with money reaching beneficiary accounts in two minutes or less. “This is in production, by the way, and it's small volume so far,” he said, so the numbers describe a working rail rather than material throughput. The strategic point for Wells Fargo is geographic. Unlike several global rivals, the bank does not operate a large international branch network, and Santomassimo argued tokenized deposits could let it win more cross-border payment business without building one. Tokenized deposits are bank liabilities recorded and transferred on a ledger, a commercial-bank instrument distinct from a central bank digital currency, which a monetary authority would issue directly. Beyond payments, the bank is examining tokenized securities, tokenized real-world assets and crypto trading for its wealth clients, possibly extending to spot trading, though Santomassimo gave no date for when any of those services might launch. Until then, the two-minute payment rail is the only tokenization product among the three banks that is live with customers.

Morgan Stanley Counts on Advice

Morgan Stanley framed the shift as a demand question rather than an infrastructure one. Chief financial officer Sharon Yeshaya said on the bank's call that quicker asset movement leaves room for human guidance: “The tokenized world means it is faster and easier to move assets around, and you will need advice.” The firm has been investing in digital capabilities across its wealth management and institutional securities units, and Yeshaya positioned tokenization as another opportunity for both, without announcing a new product or a launch window. The positioning differs from its peers: Goldman Sachs put forward a platform and a clearing pilot, while Wells Fargo described a live payment rail, so Morgan Stanley is the only one of the three leaning on service revenue rather than on rails. The stance lands in a market that has built real momentum through 2026, with a growing list of companies offering tokenized versions of equities, bonds and commodities that can trade around the clock with few geographic restrictions. On revenue, Morgan Stanley stayed as quiet as the other two.

One Technology, Three Balance Sheets

Read together, the three calls run one technology through three different balance sheets. The load-bearing record here is the companies' own earnings-call remarks and the DTCC pilot documentation, and neither Goldman Sachs nor Morgan Stanley attached a dollar figure to tokenization, which places the opportunity, for now, in the strategic-positioning column rather than the near-term earnings column. The single verifiable data point is operational: Wells Fargo's deposit rail settles cross-border payments in two minutes or less, in production, while Goldman's footprint is a platform from 2022 and a July trial, and Solomon himself sized current activity as small and at the margin. Morgan Stanley's advisory case is the hardest to test, because it rests on client behavior that has not yet shifted. The markers to watch are narrow: a wider production run on the DTCC service, a launch date from Wells Fargo for its tokenized securities and wealth-client crypto offerings, or the first revenue split any of the three banks chooses to disclose.