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Speakers to be confirmed

Topics and Questions:

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• How important are the public equity markets to traditional exchanges in developed markets? 

• Are the public equity markets too efficient to need tokenisation?

• Will cash on-chain (as tokenised deposits or central bank digital currency (CBDC)) catalyse native token issuance and atomic settlement?

• Are digitally “native” equity tokens bound to disrupt equity issuance and trading?

• Are the public equity markets the fastest (or even the only) route to achieving scale in token markets?

• Could tokenisation revive the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market?

• Is regulation a genuine constraint on tokenised equity or an excuse for inaction?

• Can blockchain technology match the speed and scale traditional equity markets have achieved?

• Must blockchain technology transform public equity markets completely or can it add efficiency to some parts of the process without changing everything?

• Will sell-side intermediaries support exchanges that embrace tokenisation by investing in the necessary technology and connectivity?

• How important to success is interoperability between blockchain protocols and between blockchain protocols and traditional exchanges?

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Panellist:
Fatmire Bekiri – Head of Tokenisation at Sygnum Bank
Rita Martins – Head of Product Ecosystem and Digital Assets at London Stock Exchange Group

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Topics and Questions:

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• Do conventional exchange projects to help private companies raise capital (e.g., Nasdaq Private Market, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) PISCES and Johannesburg Stock exchange (JSE) Private Placements) make tokenisation unnecessary? 

• Can token exchanges compete (on cost) with the private equity industry to fund private companies?

• What can tokenisation do for alternative or “real-world” asset classes (private equity, private credit, privately managed funds, infrastructure, real estate, carbon credits, collectibles, commodities etc.) that conventional securitisation cannot?

• Does the real opportunity in private equity tokenisation lie in investor relations?

• What is the difference between token platforms for private equity issues and crowd-funding platforms?

• What is the real inefficiency in alternative assets (e.g. on-boarding of investors, valuations of assets, lifecycle event management) that exchanges can address? 

• Can intrinsically illiquid asset classes be made more liquid through tokenisation (e.g., via market makers and/or Automated Market Makers (AMMs))? 

• Are secondary markets in alternative asset classes an unachievable goal?

• Is the real opportunity in alternative asset classes to integrate them with the conventional equity, bond and funds markets at the operational level?

• Several infrastructural service providers to the alternatives market have found it hard to build a business and even one relatively successful exchange has pivoted to selling to technology instead. Are privately managed asset markets too hard to scale? 

• Which side of the capital markets has failed most to rise to the opportunity in alternative asset classes: issuers or investors?

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Panellist:
Dr Robert Barnes – CEO at BPX Exchange 
Thomas Labenbacher – CEO at Founder at Assetera
Hirander Misra – CEO at GMEX

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Topics and Questions:

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• Are institutional investors too focused on income and passive funds to support companies that need capital? 

• Are institutional investors waiting for a degree of regulatory certainty that will never arrive?

• What does the experience of cryptocurrency exchanges in selling wrapped versions of blue-chip stocks prove about the retail investor appetite for tokenised securities? 

• Most traditional exchanges have forfeited retail business. Should they – and can they -recapture it? 

• Does history show that retail investors follow institutional pioneers or vice-versa?

• How can digital asset exchanges avert degeneration into a model in which retail investors provide the money and professional investors make the profits?

• Does the cryptocurrency precedent prove that exchanges must trade cryptocurrencies to attract retail investors? 

• How effective has the lowering of minimum subscriptions amounts for funds proved in attracting retail investors? 

• Is fractionalisation working?

• Which retail investors are excluded by the need to be “accredited”?

• Can issuers as well as investors be grown out of the cryptocurrency markets? 

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Panellist:

Massimo Butti – Independent
Bob Ejodame – VP Capital Markets at INX Digital 

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Topics and Questions:

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• Are institutional investors too focused on income and passive funds to support companies that need capital? 

• Are institutional investors waiting for a degree of regulatory certainty that will never arrive?

• What does the experience of cryptocurrency exchanges in selling wrapped versions of blue-chip stocks prove about the retail investor appetite for tokenised securities? 

• Most traditional exchanges have forfeited retail business. Should they – and can they -recapture it? 

• Does history show that retail investors follow institutional pioneers or vice-versa?

• How can digital asset exchanges avert degeneration into a model in which retail investors provide the money and professional investors make the profits?

• Does the cryptocurrency precedent prove that exchanges must trade cryptocurrencies to attract retail investors? 

• How effective has the lowering of minimum subscriptions amounts for funds proved in attracting retail investors? 

• Is fractionalisation working?

• Which retail investors are excluded by the need to be “accredited”?

• Can issuers as well as investors be grown out of the cryptocurrency markets? 

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Panellist:

Murat Ogat – Founder and CEO at Aktionariat 
Katie Richards – New Markets, Product development and Strategic initiatives at Incore Bank

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Topics and Questions:

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• Have multi-lateral trading facilities (MTFs), organised trading facilities (OTFs), electronic communications networks (ECNs), alternative trading systems (ATSs), cryptocurrency exchanges and the wide variety of other capital raising and trading “platforms” that have emerged in traditional and digital assets put an end to the idea of a centralised stock exchange forever? 

• Reg NMS and MiFID 1 exposed traditional stock exchanges as low margin utility businesses whose transaction revenues are susceptible to disruption by new entrants. Are traditional stock exchanges better placed to survive the challenge of tokenisation?

• When traditional exchanges point to legal and regulatory uncertainty are they finding a convenient excuse for inaction or identifying a genuine constraint on investment in new technologies and techniques? 

• In the primary markets, IPOs are in a secular slump, with private equity consuming most of the value created by unlisted companies. Are IPOs a business traditional stock exchanges should be content to lose?

• Secondary markets are fragmented, and some jurisdictions lack consolidated tapes. Will blockchain technology make these problems better or worse?

• Traditional stock exchanges in developed markets have diversified into data and data analytics and post-trade (clearing, settlement and collateral management) services. Are these businesses viable without a presence in the primary and/or secondary capital markets?

• Some new entrants provide banking services such as cash management and the provision of credit. Is this a sensible policy for an exchange?

• Will specialist token exchanges (e.g., in cryptocurrencies, alternative funds, mutual funds, privately managed assets, real estate, carbon credits etc.) persist or be consolidated?

• Must an exchange be a neutral infrastructure, or can it also be an active market participant? 

• What should an exchange that wants to encourage the development of token markets do to help to make it happen?

• Does it make sense for traditional exchanges to hedge their bets by investing in token issuance and trading infrastructure?

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Panellist:

Yalini Isweran – Executive Director Product at DTCC

Moderated by Massimo Butti,

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Topics and Questions:

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• Why have most traditional stock exchanges chosen to do nothing about tokenisation?

• Is the tokenisation threat a problem for developed market exchanges only, implying that emerging and developing economy market exchanges can carry on as normal with listing and trading? 

• Have the exchanges that have invested in tokenisation made a mistake in focusing on market education, hosting flagship issues and making the technology user-friendly rather than building an eco-system?

• Have Singapore and Switzerland obtained a competitive advantage by becoming the most successful jurisdictions at hosting digital asset exchanges? 

• Are the corporate bond markets a major opportunity for exchanges or are they a primary market issuance process opportunity only?

• Is the debate between private and public blockchains now resolved in favour of public blockchains or are traditional exchanges still reluctant to operate public blockchains?

• Will the exchange of the future be a “hybrid” of the traditional and the digital?

• Will the exchange of the future charge subscription fees rather than transaction fees?

• Has the relationship between economic growth and stock market growth broken down in developed economies?

• Can exchanges provide neutral market infrastructures akin to the “common” blockchain platforms that host third party apps advocated by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

• For exchanges, is the ability to raise capital and generate liquidity by concentrating transactional activity becoming less important than the manufacture and distribution of investment and investment-related products?

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Panellist:

Michele Curtoni – Head of Strategy and Business at SDX
Vic Arulchandran – Head of Digital Product and Market Design at Deutsche Boerse 
Martin Watkins – CEO at Montis Group

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