Let's say I buy a share of F on Monday, my brokerage routes it to Citadel, because PFOF.
On Tuesday, I expect to get a share of F delivered at close of business, because T + 1.
If Citadel doesn't deliver on Tuesday, what happens?
Are you suggesting they would continue to not deliver the share I purchased for several days, by saying oh yeah, we'll get toast0 his shares tomorrow? That would be pretty upsetting, and I imagine I'd call my brokerage and ask them why they're dealing with Citadel if they never deliver shares on time.
plus even if there is only a single share authorized for stock exchange, there will be more than one in the float, due to synthetic shares: created when shares are borrowed and then reshorted, created to support derivative market (selling calls and buying puts). ALso borrow/rehypothecation mechanics is recursive, since shares are fungible, I can recursively re-borrow and re-short the same share, creating synthetic shares out of thin air, supported by nothing other than some bytes in the database somewhere, and not physical shares
they use derivatives and heavily recycle buy/sell shares to keep kicking the FTD can down the road for as long as the market returns to their desired position.