Overview
- At Consensus Miami, senior executives said human-built, batch systems are straining under machine-speed, round-the-clock trading and pointed to tokenization on blockchains as the path to instant, continuous settlement.
- Banks are now asking how to build rather than what blockchain is, with Robinhood’s Nicola White citing a shift in client talks and Ondo highlighting work with Broadridge and DTCC to tokenize securities and enable on-chain shareholder voting.
- Regulatory steps are lowering hurdles, including the SEC’s approval for Nasdaq to trial tokenized stock trading on its venue and Federal Reserve guidance that gives tokenized securities the same capital treatment as traditional ones.
- Bullish announced a $4.2 billion deal to buy transfer agent Equiniti, which it cast as a platform for tokenized securities operations, signaling larger commercial bets to bridge legacy registries and on-chain records.
- Executives said governance remains the main brake on scale, with unclear rules for ownership, compliance, and permissions keeping institutions focused on certainty even as adoption advances along regulated U.S. tracks and separate offshore markets.