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Stablecoins are not booming and CBDCs are not dead, especially in Europe where the ECB is pressing ahead with plans for a digital euro in 2028. Different uses-cases will rely on different forms of tokenised money and the private sector is building the necessary infrastructure. Corporates are drivers of change in payments and cash management and may be pioneering the disintermediation of the banks.

Holders of cryptocurrencies are no longer satisfied by capital appreciation alone but increasingly seek income from staking and lending. Holders whose investment mandate, liquidity needs, operational capabilities and risk profile permit staking and lending should nevertheless proceed cautiously. While the risk of “slashing” is exaggerated, research into counterparty, custody and cyber-attack risks will earn rewards for institutional investors

Custody is not glamorous work. Settling securities transactions, safekeeping customer assets and collecting entitlements owed to the owners of those assets cannot compare, in terms of column inches and personal rewards, with mergers and acquisitions or the trading floor. Yet custodians have emerged, ironically in an industry created specifically to bypass intermediaries, as the single most important guarantors of investment and trading activity in the cryptocurrency markets.

The growing interest of institutional investors in cryptocurrencies is allied to rising demand for yield on cryptocurrency investments. This necessitates active management, which creates challenges. Neither Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) nor conventional mutual funds issued under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (’40 Act funds) can accommodate actively traded cryptocurrency funds.

At the turn of the century a disruptive alternative trading platform called Chi-X competed successfully with the established stock exchanges for order flow by cutting transaction costs dramatically. Blockchain technology has promised a similar revolution for more than a decade but failed conspicuously to deliver. The founders of BPX Digital Securities Marketplace, the digital securities marketplace licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in June 2025, believe they

Tokenisation enthusiasts are frustrated. A technology capable of transforming the entire financial architecture of the world is reduced to searching for “use-cases” where it can mobilise or settle assets cheaper and faster than the status quo provided a “business case” can be made for making the investment. So the time was ripe for a restatement of the case for revolution.

Institutional asset and wealth managers and end-investors are increasingly active in the cryptocurrency markets. This is putting the banks that provide them with trade and post-trade services in the traditional markets under pressure to make it easy for buy-side institutions to access cryptocurrency markets, trade cryptocurrencies, settle cryptocurrency transactions and safekeep and service cryptocurrency assets in custody.

Apex Group helping Coinbase Asset Management add a tokenised share class to a Bitcoin yield fund sounds like a small step, but it could be a giant leap for tokenised funds.

As cryptocurrencies become a standard part of institutional portfolios, asset managers are increasingly focused on generating sustainable yield—without compromising custody, governance, or risk controls. Watch the Webinar Staking has emerged as a core mechanism to earn yield on proof-of-stake networks, and adoption is accelerating as custodians integrate staking services directly into secure custody frameworks. Beyond staking, certain assets—like Bitcoin—generate yield throug

Growing clarity over the regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies and digital assets has created an opportunity for regulated financial institutions to provide their clients with access to crypto trading, investment and custody services. The question is: should they build an infrastructure in-house, buy a platform from a vendor or outsource the service to an established provider? Webinar Replay Where Finance Finds Its Future podcast by Future of Finance is available wherever

On 21 April 2026 Lingfeng Capital, the Hong Kong based private equity fund, launched its Digital Venture Fund (DVF) on Digital Markets Infrastructure (DMI) platform built by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) to host private funds. Archax, the London-based digital asset exchange, brokerage and custodian, is simultaneously making the DVF available in tokenised form.

This article is sponsored by Summer.fi. Learn more at https://summer.fi/ Institutional crypto has largely solved custody. Assets can be held securely, segregated, and audited at scale. What’s changing in 2026 is how owners of digital assets can utilise those same assets across the market to generate yield and, more importantly, who performs the asset management function on assets that have been deployed. A growing number of asset management firms are stepping on-chain not mer

Funds have emerged as the main axis of advance for tokenisation. Tokenised money market funds, used first by on-chain cryptocurrency traders, have found a second audience in traditional collateral management. Their close cousin, Stablecoins, are also migrating from the cryptocurrency markets to facilitate instant settlement of fund transactions and round-the-clock trading of tokenised funds. The question is no longer whether tokenised funds offer value to asset managers and a

Investec is connecting its client trading platform Zebra-X to the BPX digital assets exchange The link will enable users of Zebra-X to trade digital asserts in the same way that they trade conventional debt and equity securities BPX aims to offer customers a full set of digital asset management, trading, settlement, custody and depository services BPX, the London-based digital assets exchange that has already secured trading, asset management and custody licences from the Fi

On 12 March 2026, Future of Finance hosted its second Digital Asset Exchanges event, bringing together industry leaders to examine whether digital asset markets are transforming capital markets or simply re-engineering traditional exchange models through new technology, with a particular focus on liquidity, regulation, post-trade infrastructure, and the real-world scalability of tokenisation across asset classes. Relive the Event Read all takeaways, plus exclusive access to s

On 4 March 2026, Future of Finance and Edwin Coe LLP hosted an exclusive, invitation-only, half-day workshop in London on the upcoming UK cryptoasset regulatory regime, bringing together cryptocurrency and digital asset firms and financial services businesses to examine the new authorisation framework being introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in 2026. Discussions focused on the FCA’s threshold conditions, the authorisation application window between September

Deepening inter-operability between Euronext and Clearstream can be read as a solution to the fragmentation of European post-trade infrastructure Börse Stuttgart has positioned its Seturion tokenised settlement platform as an alternative to the reconfiguration of the existing post-trade infrastructure Clearstream has hedged its exposure to a tokenised future by simultaneously placing a series of bets on the growth of digital asset markets When Börse Stuttgart launched Seturio

The Fed, the FDIC and the OCC have confirmed that the capital treatment of tokenised securities and derivatives is the same as non-tokenised equivalents Tokenised securities posted as collateral will also be recognised as a credit risk mitigant on the same terms as the non-tokenised equivalents The capital treatment of a tokenised security is the same, irrespective of whether it is issued on a permissioned or permissionless blockchain. The three Federal banking industry regul

Asset manager Fidelity has issued a US dollar-denominated Stablecoin called Fidelity Digital Dollar (FIDD) onto the Ethereum blockchain The issuance follows the granting to Fidelity of a conditional trust bank licence by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) FIDD circumvents GENIUS Act restrictions on paying interest to Stablecoin holders by integrating FIDD with a tokenised money market fund Fidelity Investments has launched a US dollar-denominated Stablecoin,

Cross-border payments platform Payoneer has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter A federal banking licence will enable Payoneer customers to pay and get paid in Stablecoins and hold Stablecoin balances in digital wallets Payoneer plans to issue its own US dollar-denominated Stablecoin that its clients can use to settle cross-border payments and hold in digital wallets Payoneer , the cross-border payments technology p