The infrastructure that underpins today’s institutional financial markets is being rewired to support instantaneous transactions, always-on operation, hacker-proof privacy, and drastically reduced costs.
Platform upgrades that leverage distributed ledger technology (DLT – including blockchain networks, smart contracts and cryptographic proofs), asset programmability via tokenisation, peer-to-peer transactions, and decentralised data, are being implemented to boost functionality, performance and scale, delivering:- Efficient 24/7 trading of established asset classes
- Near-instant transaction settlement and custody
- Real-time, private and secure cross-border payments
- Frictionless micropayments between AI agents
- Fractional trading of illiquid real-world assets
- Real-time, dynamic and programable compliance
- On demand access to collateral and credit
- Much reduced operational and market risk
“We’re going to see privacy enabled on public blockchain networks, which is going to enable compliant businesses to be built on these emerging infrastructures. And that will enable the reach, the neutrality, and the shared liquidity to unlock the network effects that we’ve been discussing for nearly 10 years now,” – commented Oliver Harris, Head of Kinexys, J.P. Morgan, on the investment bank’s Making Sense podcast.
The business bottom line is that these many benefits result in reduced costs for financial institutions. Speaking at a recent conference, Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton – as asset manager with $1.74 trillion in assets – provided a real-life example: Processing 50,000 transactions used to cost the firm $1.30 per transaction. Now, the same workload performed on the Stellar blockchain costs just $1.13 per transaction, a significant overall cost reduction.
Increased regulatory clarity has been a major driver for business innovation. Jurisdictions are evolving from experimental “crypto” regimes to define clear, institutional-grade legal frameworks. The involvement of mainstream regulators is giving major banks and corporations the confidence to invest in new infrastructure and to develop financial services and products to leverage them.
In conclusion, a meaningful convergence of business opportunities, regulatory evolution and technical innovation has now been achieved, and it is set to deliver on the promise of Wall Street 2.0 globally.
It’s in the context of this convergence that we are excited to launch Digital Assets & Tokenisation Insight, which will track, chronicle and analyse the business and technology developments that are transforming the Wall Street 2.0 promise into reality.
We want to talk to everyone who is involved in the digital assets space and have already begun to engage with our community. But don’t wait for our outreach. Feel free to get in touch with Pete Harris, Editor of DATI, via email at pete@a-teamgroup.com.
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