Overview
- At the Consensus conference in Miami, finance and crypto leaders said systems built for market hours and manual checks are buckling under nonstop, machine-led trading.
- Speakers pointed to tokenization, which turns assets into digital tokens that can settle in real time on a blockchain, as the fix for batch-based clearing that waits hours or days to finalize trades.
- Executives said banks have moved from asking what blockchains are to asking how to build on them, citing work with incumbents like Broadridge and the DTCC and products that allow weekend minting and daily yield.
- Recent steps by regulators lowered hurdles, with Nasdaq cleared to test tokenized stock trading and the Federal Reserve confirming that tokenized securities get the same capital treatment as their traditional twins.
- Bullish said it will buy Equiniti to create a transfer agent for tokenized securities, while panelists warned that missing governance rules on ownership, compliance and permissions still limit broad adoption.