BitGo and Figure have just kicked off the first “native on-chain” public equity trades, marking a real-world step toward issuing, custodying, and settling stocks fully on blockchain within a regulated framework.
📌 On Feb 20, 2026, BitGo and Figure announced they completed the world’s first native on-chain equity trades, a notable milestone for bringing public-market workflows directly onto an on-chain rail.
💡 The key distinction is that the shares are issued and settled on Provenance via the OPEN network and Figure’s ATS, rather than being processed through the traditional DTCC-style custody and clearing stack, shifting the narrative from simple “tokenization” to truly blockchain-native issuance.
🔎 With an order book structure and atomic T+0 settlement, the model targets lower settlement risk, faster reconciliation, and more flexible trading mechanics, while BitGo Bank & Trust provides qualified custody to anchor compliance and institutional-grade safeguards.
⏱️ Figure also acted as the first issuer with its blockchain common stock (FGRD), following an upsized $150 million secondary offering the day before, helping connect primary issuance to an on-chain secondary market from the start.
⚠️ The immediate challenge remains liquidity and issuer breadth, since the market only becomes durable once more listed companies join and institutional investors are comfortable operating under the new custody and operational rails.
✅ If U.S. regulatory clarity continues to improve around tokenization and ATS infrastructure, OPEN could become a reference model for on-chain public equities, but near term it is still a liquidity-and-adoption build from a small base.
