Are specialist intermediaries such as market-makers necessary to generate liquidity in tokenised asset markets? Traditional markets prove that liquidity does not arise naturally from the interaction of issuers and investors, and cannot be sustained by their activities either, but must instead be created by market-makers and sell- and buy-side firms using collateralised credit and asset borrowings to take positions and increase the value of their trades (see Chart 1). So liqui

A Future of Finance interview with Richard Brown, Chief Technology and Product Officer at R3. R3 celebrates its tenth anniversary this...

A Future of Finance interview with Ciarán McGonagle, Chief Legal & Product Officer at Tokenovate. Tokenovate delivers post-trade...

Will Tokenisation be the nemesis of exchanges or the re-making of them? Date: March 13, 2025 Venue: Reed Smith Offices at 1 Blossom...

Digital asset custody: What can possibly go wrong?

How do the risks of digital asset custody differ from the risks of traditional custody? Digital assets are not the same as conventional financial assets, so custodians must master familiar risks in unfamiliar guises, and entirely new risks. The fact that ownership of a digital asset depends on possession of private keys is an obvious difference from registered securities or funds. The keys are routinely sharded into multiple parts which must not only be reassembled as needed

How is the digital asset custody industry evolving? The origins of digital asset custody lie in the initial cryptocurrency boom of 2015-2017. Retail investors needed digital wallets to hold the private keys to their coins, and the cryptocurrency exchanges provided them. Independent digital asset custodians, and vendors of independent digital asset custody technologies, proliferated in 2017 and especially 2018, as the first cryptocurrency bubble inflated and then deflated.  At

Custodians have been obliged since 2019 to check that holders of cryptocurrencies and Stablecoins are not money launderers, terrorists or sanctions evaders. (1)  What impact have those obligations had on the day-to-day practice of digital asset custodians?  Both traditional custodian banks and specialist digital asset custodians have recognised the need to comply with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) obligations to run Anti Money Laundering (AML), Countering the Financi

Why do digital asset custodians exist at all when blockchain was invented to eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries? Issuers and investors, and intermediaries such as asset managers and brokers, are agreed that custodians are essential to secure mainstream adoption of digital assets. Such universal agreement reflects the fact that custodians reassure investors, asset managers and brokers that their assets are safe, and their privacy and confidentiality will be respecte

​* R3’s Corda dominates the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market, with over $10 billion in on-chain assets – setting the standard for industry adoption * Trusted by the world’s leading banks, Corda represents the largest ecosystem of live RWA networks, processing over 1 million transactions each day  * Client momentum across R3’s digital products suite, supported by regulatory and industry tailwinds, is driving the highest number of live applications in production globally

What is the event about? This virtual round table is a Thought Leadership discussion focused on how to solve the biggest single obstacle...

A Future of Finance interview with Sanjeev Birari, Co-Founder and CBO of Zoniqx. Zoniqx, the California based pioneer of tokenisation...

What are the incentives for private debt and equity issuers to tokenise their offerings? Securities token offerings (STOs) are suited to companies that are too big for crowd-funding platforms and too small for the conventional capital markets. So it is not surprising that the audience thought private debt and equity issuers are not just the obvious beneficiaries of tokenisation (Chart 1) but the issuers with the greatest appetite to tokenise securities (Chart 2) and the issue

Discover how tokenisation is revolutionising asset management. Learn how tokenisation helps distribute products to new investors effectively.

What tokenisation will enable the financial markets to deliver tomorrow which they cannot provide today

Why the benefits of tokenisation depend on the issuance of “native” rather than “asset-backed” (or "digital twin”) digital assets

How a common platform or unified ledger could unleash network effects in the token markets

Does tokenisation have a scaling problem today and, if so, why?  Some token platforms are growing. But tokenisation as a whole is struggling to scale. This is largely because the business case for adoption is not yet clear. However, the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) bubble of 2017, the cryptocurrency crisis of 2022 and the Proofs of Concept and Pilot Tests of the early explorations of blockchain by regulated institutions were important staging posts and are in the past. The ind

What are the costs of lack of digital money on chain? The absence of on-chain money to settle the cash leg of transactions on blockchains and pay entitlements has many negative effects on the security and fund token markets. Ultimately, every tokenisation use-case depends on the availability of on-chain cash to realise its potential value to users. After all, a large part of the appeal of blockchain is its ability to capture transactions, settlements and transaction records o

Are vested interests at work? Regulated financial institutions have adopted a cautious approach to tokenisation. But the main reason is not protection of existing revenue streams. It is a concern that the existing structure of the capital markets reflects the lessons of experience, and that it would be foolish to jettison that knowledge and the safeguards it erected in pursuit of the cost savings afforded by disintermediation. That said, there are cases where incumbents resis