Nadine Chakar on the future of tokenisation

A Future of Finance interview with Nadine Chakar at DTCC.With the acquisition in October 2023 of Securrency, a FinTech that specialises in the development of blockchain technology for regulated financial institutions, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) signalled the end of the experimental phase of its engagement with digital assets. That phase dated back to at least December 2015, when DTCC joined the Linux Foundation Hyperledger project. That was quickly followed by participation in the US$60 million Series A fundraising by Digital Asset Holdings in January 2016, and publication the same month of a white paper on blockchain that warned of the potential “generational disruptive force” of blockchain. DTCC has maintained its interest in blockchain ever since, notably via the launch in November 2021 of DSM, an infrastructure to support the tokenisation of privately managed assets. But the Securrency acquisition gives the clearing and settlement infrastructure the tools it needs to move beyond narrow asset classes and Proofs of Concept (PoCs) and Pilot Tests and actually build an open tokenisation infrastructure for the whole of the American capital markets: a blockchain platform, a tokenisation engine, a smart contract engine, a digital asset custody service, programmable token capabilities, off-chain storage of ledger data and digital identity information, and a set of tools to ensure assets remain compliant as they travel across the digital asset eco-system. The Securrency acquisition also brought to DTCC Nadine Chakar, a senior and experienced securities services executive with an attested appetite for innovation who had joined the firm as CEO only nine months earlier from State Street, where she was Head of Digital. Her appointment as Global Head of DTCC Digital Assets is a boost for those who believe that the key to unlocking the potential of tokenised assets is open infrastructure. To find out if those hopes are justified, read, listen or watch Future of Finance Co-founder Dominic Hobson interviewing Nadine Chakar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.