About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Kaiko and Bloomberg Promote Standards for Digital Asset Markets with Release of Financial Instrument Global Identifiers for Crypto Assets

Subscribe to our newsletter

Kaiko, a cryptocurrency market data provider, is bringing Bloomberg’s Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) into play as a means of identifying crypto assets and enabling greater interoperability between industry participants including digital asset exchanges, data aggregators, custodians, service providers and regulators. The companies’ first move is the release of a batch of FIGIs for all Bitcoin and Ethereum instruments denominated in fiat currencies.

As well as being a step up for the FIGI, the use of the identifier for crypto assets is an early push towards meeting the need for standardisation across digital asset markets to ensure consistency, transparency and greater efficiency.

The FIGI was designated an open standard by the Object Management Group (OMG) back in 2015 and acts as a unique identifier of financial instruments including equities, derivatives, bonds, municipals, and currencies. In September 2021, the FIGI was accredited as a US national standard by the Accredited Standards Committee X9 Inc. Earlier this year, Kaiko was approved by OMG as a certified provider of Crypto FIGIs working alongside Bloomberg as the registration authority for the identifiers.

FIGIs will be assigned at three levels of granularity – asset, currency pair, and trading platform – to provide market participants with greater transparency and a broader view across the sector. The FIGI standard will be compatible with and complement alternative standards. For example, each instrument assigned a FIGI may also be tied at the asset level to an International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) with appropriate licensing or other identifiers, such as the ISO’s planned Digital Token Identifier (DTI).

Ambre Soubiran, CEO at Kaiko, says: “The lack of taxonomy, regulatory, and classification standards is one of the cryptocurrency industry’s greatest pain points today. FIGIs for crypto assets will vastly improve interoperability between service providers and bring much-needed uniformity to the sector.”

Endorsing the use of FIGIs as crypto identifiers, Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger, provider of a crypto hardware wallet, says: “Ledger products support more than 3,000 crypto assets. The ability to identify these assets and fetch key data is critical to our success A single unified instrument code will not only greatly improve our scalability and resilience, but also bring high value to our users. FIGI is a much needed initiative in the crypto industry.”

Stéphane Duzan, chief operating officer of Société Générale – Forge, comments: “Consistent standards and market practices, such as the open source initiatives FIGI and CAST Framework, are essential to achieving digital assets adoption. FIGI fosters product identification of digital assets by providing the industry with unified identifiers at a global scale.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to simplify and modernize data architecture to unleash data value and innovation

The data needs of financial institutions are growing at pace as new formats and greater volumes of information are integrated into their systems. With this has come greater complexity in managing and governing that data, amplifying pain points along data pipelines. In response, innovative new streamlined and flexible architectures have emerged that can absorb and...

BLOG

Overcoming Data Challenges of Rapidly Evolving ESG Space: ESG Data and Tech Briefing Preview

The rapid maturation of ESG data integration and utilisation within financial institutions has forced them to invest in new technology and data management processes. The rate of change, however, has been a challenge for some organisations, which have struggled to put in place the necessary capabilities to absorb, order and deploy such large volumes of...

EVENT

Data Management Summit New York City

Now in its 15th year the Data Management Summit NYC brings together the North American data management community to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...