Like insurance and trade finance, international art is a large and valuable market bedevilled by extended chains of intermediaries, excessive levels of fraud and hefty transaction costs.

HQLAx is a properly funded start-up using the R3 Corda variant of blockchain technology to improve the ability of banks to mobilise eligible collateral, wherever it is, by tokenising assets while leaving them exactly where they are.

No market has defied attempts to reconstruct it quite as deftly as foreign exchange (FX). The US$6.6 trillion a day market provides a handsome living for a great many people, despite a succession of embarrassing scandals and the publication by central banks of a global Code of Conduct designed to prevent them.

Many factors inhibit institutional issuers and investors from adopting security tokens as readily as some institutions have taken to crypto-currencies. But an asset class in need of tokenization - privately managed assets - has been identified and an institutional grade infrastructure is being built to welcome institutional investors.

Crypto-currency trading provides returns commensurate with the volatility of the asset class, but not many people have subjected the characteristics of the investment to formal analysis. One person who has is Dr Martin Angerer, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Liechtenstein in Vaduz.

The principality of Liechtenstein provides the most welcoming environment on the planet for the entrepreneurs of the token economy. Thomas Nägele, managing partner at the Nägele law firm in Vaduz and a software developer as well as a lawyer, was a member of the government working party that drafted the Liechtenstein Trusted Technology Law (TVTG) or Blockchain Act.

The custodian banks and central securities depositories (CSDs) that make up the global securities services industry are understandably intrigued by institutional investment in crypto-currencies, disintermediating experiments in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) market and the looming possibility of exponential growth in security tokens.

Liechtenstein was the first jurisdiction in the world to pass a comprehensive law on tokenization.  When the Token and Trustworthy Technology Service Provider Act (TVTG) became law on 1 January 2020, it became possible for issuers to tokenize any asset that exists in the physical world - from real estate, through precious metals and collectibles, to securities such as equities and bonds – with the comfort of legal certainty. 

In late March 2021 a path to liquidity and growth opened in the security token markets. The Private Markets Digitization Steering Group (PMDSG), a group of banks, financial market infrastructures, technology vendors and FinTechs formed under the umbrella of Global Digital Finance in the spring of 2020 went public with a specification that will make inter-operable blockchain networks a reality for the first time.

Security tokens are no longer something that will happen in the future. Security token offerings (STOs) are happening in the private capital markets, which are already large and growing rapidly as the public capital markets shrink. Unlike the public markets, private markets also suffer from operational shortcomings and liquidity problems that tokenisation can solve. Regulatory respectability is being actively sought, and developers are applying solutions tested in the DeFi markets to many of the barriers to institutional engagement. But the real test of security tokens still lies in the future: what can we do now which we could not do before?

Security tokens are coming. In fact, they are here already, and have been for a while. Though most of the security token offerings (STOs) in the last three years were hard to distinguish from Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), several corporates and banks (Banco Santander, Bank of China, BBV, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale) have tokenised bonds or loans on public as well as private blockchain networks.

Even conservative observers of the financial markets believe security tokens may be about to embark on a period of exponential growth, If they do, tokenisation will threaten the ways in which CSDs currently support the securities markets. But security tokens also present CSDs with an array of opportunities to reinvent how they operate, from governing permissioned blockchain networks to orchestrating continuous auctions of best-in-breed post-trade services. If they have the courage to embrace change, they will find support in some unexpected quarters – regulatory agencies and tokenisation platforms.

SUMMARY OF CSDs WEBINAR APRIL 8 2021

As blockchain technology emerges from the Trough of Disillusionment (© Gartner) and ascends the Slope of Enlightenment (© Gartner) the original promise of what it can deliver once it reaches the Plateau of Productivity (© Gartner) is being rediscovered. 

One reason institutional money is now being invested in crypto-currencies is that it is safe to do so. Fireblocks, the provider of an institutional-grade safe custody and settlement platform for digital assets, can take a good measure of the credit for what is happening. Dominic Hobson spoke to Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder of the firm, as it completed a US$133 million Series C fund-raising that also saw giant global custodian BNY Mellon take a strategic stake in Fireblocks.

Security tokens are coming. In fact, they are here already, and have been for a while. Though most of the security token offerings (STOs) in the last three years were hard to distinguish from Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), several corporates and banks (Banco Santander, Bank of China, BBV, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale) have tokenised bonds or loans on public as well as private blockchain networks.

Central securities depositories (CSDs) were imposed by regulators in the 1990s to solve the securities settlement problems of the 1980s. They have succeeded admirably in that task but so far only a handful have sought to move decisively beyond it and embrace the new opportunities created by the tokenisation of financial assets on blockchain-based networks. Instead, the majority of CSDs have appealed to their origins in the minds of central bankers and securities market regulators of a generation ago. Ironically, the trust imparted by their record of success and regulated status are precisely the qualities that would enable CSDs to exploit the tokenisation markets.

As investment banks shrink the balance sheet available to buy-side firms that like to trade on credit, the need for an alternative has become urgent. To fill the gap, San Francisco-based Bosonic has adapted the tokenisation and atomic settlement techniques pioneered by the crypto-currency markets. By making settlement of each half of a trade conditional on the delivery of the other half, the need for intermediation by bank is eliminated. And tokenisation of securities in custody on to a blockchain network allows fully funded assets to be used as collateral for credit without leaving their custody account. Rosario Ingargiola, CEO of Bosonic, told Dominic Hobson how it all works.

A Future of Finance Interview
Dominic Hobson talks to Scott Thiel about the launch of TOKO, a fast, secure and cost-effective solution for buying and selling high value assets using blockchain technology

Paris is not the obvious launch pad for a young and ambitious CSD that wants to help the European Central Bank (ECB) fulfil its vision of a single euro money market capable of competing with the United States. But the largest commercial paper market in Europe is a solid foundation on which to build a blockchain-based technology platform that offers issuers, investors and their agents a fully integrated, pan-European issuance, trading and settlement platform for a new class of genuinely international financial instruments. It may become extremely lively as economies emerge from the Pandemic, and access to credit becomes crucial for businesses of all sizes and types

Future of Finance Interview with Richard Byworth, CEO of Diginex [NASDAQ: EQOS]

Dominic Hobson explores Richard's thinking about how cryptocurrency and digital assets have evolved and what solutions Diginex offers in security token issuance, trading and custody and more.

A Future of Finance interview with Saum Noursalehi, CEO of tZero, on what the company is doing in the burgeoning security token markets.

A SUMMARY AND FULL REVIEW OF THE DISCUSSION AT THE WEBINAR ON 20 OCTOBER 2020

An Account of the Discussion at the Walbrook Club on 4 March 2020

L4S is a start-up led by people who know that a successful blockchain revolution in securities clearing and settlement cannot ignore either the technical limitations of the technology or the prevailing dispensation of service providers, market infrastructures, transaction processing technologies and accounting methodologies. If their approach catches on, blockchain in securities services could just be in the foothills of the Slope of Enlightenment.