Digital Securities and Digital Cash Summit

Two separate but related problems have plagued the financial markets for years. The first is that traditional forms of money and payment systems have reached their end of their useful lives. The second is that the capital markets are inefficient: issuers pay more for capital, investors earn less from capital and intermediaries have grown rich from adding transactions costs.

Change has occurred in the money and payments markets. The settlement of payments has accelerated. New payment service providers have emerged, displacing the banks. New payment instruments, such as Stablecoins, emerged from the cryptocurrency markets. But in the capital markets, a stalemate prevailed in which change appeared to be impossible.

The European Central Bank (ECB) Wholesale DLT Settlement trials have broken the stalemate. The trials were directed at one problem: how to overcome the lack of on-chain fiat currency to complete the cash leg of capital markets transactions on blockchain networks, especially in central bank money. But in identifying a solution to that problem, the trials opened a series of cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing possibilities.

These included the issuance of bonds and commercial paper, secondary trading of securities, settlement of securities, bilateral and triparty intra-day repo, margin payments and the servicing of assets in custody using smart contracts as well as wholesale payments versus payments and the value of tokenised deposits. In short, the trials have proved that blockchain technology works across payments and capital markets.

The challenge now is to scale the breakthroughs achieved by the ECB and the 64 financial institutions that took part in the trials. The ECB has announced it will build on the success of the trials and develop a roadmap for change in 2026-27. Which means that banks, financial market infrastructures and their buy- and sell-side users, including asset managers and issuers, must start to plan for a tokenised future now. This event will help them do that.

Topics:

1. Did the ECB Wholesale DLT Settlement Trials solve the absence of cash on-chain or provide no more than a temporary fix?
2. Where have all the tokenised deposits gone?
3. Are Euro Stablecoins poised to overthrow the status quo in corporate and consumer payments?
4. Are traditional financial market infrastructures (FMIs) such as stock exchanges and central securities depositories (CSDs) in danger of being overtaken by events?
5. How can issuers and investors best be engaged in making the change?

Audience: CFOs; Treasurers; Heads of operations; CTOs; CISOs; Heads of repo desks at investment banks; Money market fund managers; Stock exchange, CSD and custodian bank officials; Corporate issuers; End-investors; Blockchain technology vendors; Policymakers; Central bankers; Securities and money market regulators.

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Keynote Speaker

Head of Market Innovation and Integration at the European Central

Hear from Speakers and an Esteemed Panel of Experts:

Founder and CEO at 21x

- CEO at Cashlink

Head of Short Term Products, Equity Finance & FX at Deka Bank

Director at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Centre

Founder and CEO of Axiology

Chief Capital Officer and Senior Partner at MembersCap

Head of Digitisation and Innovation at DZ Bank

CEO at Quant

Head of Market Management and Digital Currencies at Deutsche Bank

Founder of Ubyx Inc

Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank

Chief Commercial Officer at AllUnity

Executive Director Group Strategy, M&A and Innovation at Börse Stuttgart Group

CEO at ANNA Association of National Numbering Agencies

Partner at IBM

Managing Director of VanEck (Europe)

Senior Manager for Digital Asset Banking and Paying Agent Specialist at Incore Bank

Chief Business Officer and Deputy CEO at Oblig

Info: 1. Why is cash settlement crucial to the growth of security token markets?
2. What did the ECB wholesale DLT settlement trials aim to find out?
3. Did the ECB trials prove that token transactions can be settled in central bank money without fiat currency on-chain?
4. Why did the ECB trials abjure on-chain forms of money?
5. Have the ECB trials proved that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are unnecessary?
6. How is the proposed interoperability link between blockchain networks and existing payment systems expected to work?
7.How easy will it be to scale the findings of the trials?
8. What is the impact of the ECB plans on the planned transition to a T+1 settlement timetable within the euro area in October 2027?
9. What are the implications for currencies other than the euro?

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Info: 1. When the European Banking Authority polled EEA central banks it identified only one ‘live’ case and two reported projects of tokenised deposits, one of them a consortium. What explains the limited interest?
2. What is the status of the Commercial Bank Money Token (CBMT) project led by the Federation of German Industries and the German Banking Industry Committee?
3. Does the use of the tokenised deposit in issue indicate that tokenised deposits are better suited to some transaction types than others (e.g., payments versus payments in cash markets, delivery versus payment in securities markets)?
4. Tokenised deposits issued so far (are being used to settle transactions internally within banks between clients of the same bank. What are the obstacles to using tokenised deposits to transfer value between banks?

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Info: 1. A total of 14 euro denominated Stablecoins are in issue, including EURC from Circle, EURS from Stasis, EURCV from Société Générale, AEUR from Anchored Coins, EURI from Banking Circle and EURt from Tether) but even the biggest is tiny by comparison with US dollar Stablecoins. What explains the limited capitalisation of euro Stablecoins?
2. What useful knowledge have the euro Stablecoin pioneers such as Circle and Société Générale accumulated?
3. What is the status of the proposed DWS regulated euro Stablecoin?
4. What impact has MiCAR had on non-compliant euro Stablecoins such as EURt?

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Info: 1. Lack of fiat currency on-chain is often cited as an obstacle to progress with tokenisation of securities. Since the ECB trials have identified a workable solution, how should European FMIs be positioning themselves?
2. Solutions are also being found to the second major obstacle to the growth of token markets – namely interoperability – via initiatives such as SWIFT-Chainlink and the Wormhole platform. Do FMIs need to act now?
3. What progress has been made in linking the traditional financial markets to the tokenised markets?
4. Is peer-to-peer settlement, without intermediation by custodian banks and CSDs, a realistic possibility?

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Info: 1. The ECB Wholesale DLT Settlement Trials have created a momentum for change within the banking industry. Is the engagement of banks enough to maintain progress in tokenised markets?
2. The trials involved more than 60 firms but only a handful (EIB, KfW, Siemens) of issuers took part. Does this mean issuers take no responsibility for capital markets?
3. Even fewer asset managers, and no end-investors, were actively involved in the ECB trials. Will the buy-side always wait to be offered a service rather than play any part in developing it?
4. Do banks (lower funding, capital, cash and collateral costs) have more to gain from tokenisation than asset managers (lower operational and compliance costs, increased distribution, fractionalisation, personalised investment strategies) or end-investors (higher returns) or issuers (lower cost of capital)?

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