Stream Merchants, the principal buying and selling agency, mentioned in the present day (Thursday) it has opened an over-the-counter desk providing steady, two-way liquidity for tokenized money-market funds, equities, and commodities, with Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund and Tether’s gold-backed token XAU₮ among the many preliminary merchandise coated.
The desk is designed to run across the clock, seven days every week, and targets permissioned institutional counterparties that, the corporate mentioned, have to handle fairness and commodity publicity when conventional exchanges are closed.
Counterparties can commerce tokenized fairness and commodity exposures in opposition to fiat currencies or stablecoins, utilizing normal OTC workflows with outlined settlement processes.
In a single day Volumes Driving the Push
Stream Merchants CEO Thomas Spitz
Stream Merchants CEO Thomas Spitz framed the launch as the newest step in an extended shift in how traders entry market publicity. “Over the previous 20 years, evolving market constructions, from ETFs to digital buying and selling, have remodeled how traders entry publicity,” Spitz mentioned. “Tokenization has the potential to be one of many subsequent main steps in that evolution.”
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The corporate acknowledged that in some large-cap U.S. shares, mixed exercise throughout tokenized and artificial markets has “at occasions reached round 2-3% of the notional buying and selling quantity of their major U.S. listings,” with a lot of that exercise occurring outdoors common U.S. market hours. Stream Merchants didn’t determine which shares or cite an impartial supply for these figures.
The agency’s transfer into tokenized OTC liquidity follows a number of years of constructing out its digital asset infrastructure. In 2023, Stream Merchants’ crypto subsidiary was registered by De Nederlandsche Financial institution as a supplier of crypto providers within the Netherlands, authorizing the agency to supply spot OTC cryptocurrency liquidity and make markets in crypto exchange-traded merchandise.
Tether Gold Included From Day One
Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, Supply: LinkedIn
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino mentioned the partnership displays a broader pickup in demand for gold publicity throughout each conventional and on-chain markets.
“Demand for gold, each in conventional markets and on chain, has accelerated as traders search for resilient shops of worth in a extra unsure macro setting,” Ardoino commented. “Liquidity suppliers equivalent to Stream Merchants play a important position in making certain that tokenized property like XAU₮ can commerce effectively throughout venues and attain a broader set of market contributors.”
Ardoino added that “supporting XAU₮ throughout a number of exchanges and thru their OTC desk helps strengthen the market construction round digital representations of bodily gold,” framing the association as an infrastructure enchancment fairly than a purely business one.
The desk gives what the agency describes as danger controls designed particularly for in a single day and weekend market situations, although it didn’t elaborate on the mechanics of these controls.
Institutional OTC Market Faces Consolidation
The launch locations Stream Merchants amongst a rising subject of corporations constructing infrastructure for tokenized real-world property, even because the broader OTC liquidity supplier market faces rising strain.
A survey printed by Finery Markets in early 2026 discovered that 60% of institutional OTC contributors anticipated the variety of lively liquidity suppliers to fall earlier than year-end, suggesting consolidation could also be approaching whilst new entrants broaden into the house.
Stream Merchants has been broadening its digital asset presence on a number of fronts over latest years. The agency joined DWS and Galaxy Digital in a three way partnership to develop a euro-denominated stablecoin, and was named the only real liquidity supplier in TP ICAP’s institutional crypto buying and selling platform when it launched in 2021.
The brand new OTC desk extends that exercise into the tokenized asset house, the place dialogue at Davos in January centered on wholesale fairly than retail purposes as establishments started to deal with tokenization as a sensible infrastructure query fairly than a speculative one.
Entry and Availability
Establishments can attain the desk by way of direct FIX connectivity, OMS/EMS platforms, ECNs, or high-touch OTC execution.
The corporate declares that asset protection will broaden primarily based on counterparty demand and regulatory issues, and famous that product availability might range by jurisdiction and counterparty eligibility, with completely different members of the Stream Merchants group offering providers relying on their regulatory standing in a given market.
