Bitcoin lenders may need to become more like traditional finance firms, not less, if they want institutional capital to keep flowing into the sector.
At Consensus 2026 in Miami, Alexander Blume, founder and CEO of institutional bitcoin lender Two Prime, argued that the next stage of crypto credit growth will depend less on decentralized finance experimentation and more on standardization, transparency, and risk management.
“The moment you start trying to explain how any of this stuff works, they’re just like, No… We’ll pay more. Don’t lose my money,” Blume said, referring to institutional borrowers evaluating crypto lending products that become difficult to defend during periods of market stress.
The comments reflected a broader post-2022 shift in crypto lending following the collapses of Celsius, Voyager, and BlockFi, when opaque leverage, aggressive rehypothecation, and weak risk controls triggered a wider credit crisis across the industry. In the years since, many institutional borrowers have moved away from complex DeFi structures in favor of products centered on transparent custody, standardized contracts, and clearly identifiable counterparties.
Across the panel, speakers repeatedly suggested that institutional finance and crypto-native finance remain fundamentally misaligned in their approaches to risk. While DeFi evolved around permissionless access, composability, and capital efficiency, institutions continue to prioritize predictability, legal accountability, and operational simplicity.
That tension was especially visible in the discussion around rehypothecation, the practice of reusing customer collateral to generate additional yield, which became one of the defining risks exposed during the 2022 lending collapse.
“The most important thing to ask… is where is your Bitcoin stored,” said Adam Reeds, co-founder and CEO of Ledn.
Jay Patel, co-founder and CEO of Lygos Finance, said borrowers increasingly need to “underwrite the lender” themselves before taking loans against their bitcoin holdings.
“The biggest point in my mind is definitely the rehypothecation piece,” Patel said.
Blume said institutional borrowers often reject crypto-native lending structures not because they oppose bitcoin, but because the operational complexity surrounding many DeFi systems remains difficult to justify to boards, shareholders, and risk committees.
At one point, Blume distilled the divide between crypto-native finance and institutional finance into a single observation.
“Our whole financial system is set up to have someone else to blame,” he said, arguing that institutional borrowers still prefer identifiable intermediaries, standardized processes, and legal accountability over fully autonomous financial systems.
For many lenders on stage, the future of crypto credit no longer appears tied to making finance more decentralized. Instead, it may depend on convincing institutional borrowers that bitcoin-backed lending can behave predictably enough to resemble the traditional system they already trust.
As the UK considers options to attract and develop the crypto industry at home, the Bank of England (BOE) has put forward several proposals for how it might regulate stablecoins to mitigate perceived financial risks.
These have included a ban on custodial wallets for stablecoin holdings. The UK crypto industry, from stablecoin issuers to Bitcoin hardliners, has predictably taken issue with the ban.
“This would be a serious misstep for the UK, risking long-term damage that is hard to unwind,” said Benoit Marzouk, CEO of stablecoin issuer tGBP told Cointelegraph.
Ban could hamper operability and competitiveness
At the heart of the BOE’s approach to stablecoins, which it recently discussed in a series of inquiries before the House of Lords, is protecting the UK banking system.
The bank argues that unhindered access to stablecoins, which can offer higher yields than traditional banking products, could lead to a run on deposits, and therefore on credit availability from UK banks.
In March, Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden told the House of Lords Financial Services Regulation Committee that BOE is “open to other ways of achieving the objective” of credit availability.
Breeden speaks before Parliament. Source: Parliament
“But I think you would expect us as the financial stability authority to ensure that there isn’t a precipitous drop in credit to the businesses and households in the UK,” she said.
One way it believes it can affect this is through banning unhosted wallets. “There is this concept of an unhosted wallet, where you haven’t got a wallet provider who is a regulated entity ensuring that AML [Anti-Money Laundering], KYC [Know Your Customer] criteria are complied with. Unhosted wallets will not be permissible in the UK. They are permissible in the US regime,” Breeden told the committee.
For the crypto industry, it would be two steps backward. According to Marzouk, it would “wipe out hard-earned network effects.”
“If transfers are limited to registered VASPs or custodial wallets, existing GBP stablecoins […] would become in breach of regulations with holding on self-hosted or issuers would be forced into whitelisting models and re-issuing new tokens.”
Related: UK central bank is warming up to stablecoins, but says industry input is lacking
Joey Garcia, chief strategy, policy, and regulatory affairs officer at Xapo Bank, told Cointelegraph that, instead of being an update to the financial system, “this ban essentially restricts any attempt to understand and mitigate the perceived risks.”
“This would be interpreted as a signal of a hostile regulatory environment, discouraging developers and investment in the UK’s fintech sector.”
Marzouk said that it also undermines an important use case for stablecoins, namely remittances. Under the BOE’s regime, “recipients couldn’t access funds unless fully onboarded with a regulated exchange.”
Source: ORF America
“A plane without wings is no longer a plane. Likewise, a stablecoin or blockchain asset that can only be transferred to a predefined list of wallets is not truly blockchain, it is effectively e-money within a closed ecosystem and then you don’t need a separate regulation.”
Garcia also said that the utility of stablecoins would be diminished as they “derive much of their value from the ability to be held and transferred on a peer-to-peer basis on open networks.”
“This is particularly relevant for the unbanked and underbanked around the globe, for whom self-custodial wallets and regulated on-ramps can be a primary gateway into digital financial services, and access to digital dollars or digital pounds.”
Curbing such a major use case for stablecoins “kills a major strategic opportunity: Positioning the Pound Sterling, one of the strongest and most trusted currencies, as a credible alternative to USD stablecoins,” said Marzouk.
Crypto industry questions feasibility of wallet ban
Beyond the issue of competitiveness is the feasibility of implementing an unhosted wallet ban.
Susie Violet Ward, the director and co-founder of Bitcoin Policy UK, said that these rules would do little to address real illicit flows, but would rather “expand data collection, erode privacy, impose costs, and add friction and limit access through banks and intermediaries.”
Freddie New, chief policy officer at the Bitcoin Policy UK, said that the proposed policy from BOE was of “such monumental, such overweening, stupidity, that it is hard to formulate a sensible response.”
New said, “let everyone in the UK simply continue to use their ‘self-hosted wallets’ (ie ‘wallets’) without paying them a second’s more attention.”
It may not be as simple as that. The central bank does have some levers it can pull that would be particularly relevant for stablecoins. But even then, “this is extremely challenging to monitor, let alone enforce,” said Garcia.
The BOE could focus on Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs). Marzouk said that the bank could limit the issuance of new stablecoins into registered VASPs like crypto exchanges. In turn, these would only allow transfers to other VASPs or custodians “through the validation of existing tools that have been created for the Travel Rule regulation.”
But even this, per Marzouk, stretches the intended purpose of the Travel Rule. “The Travel Rule is designed to enable VASPs to exchange information if there’s some complaints from clients of identity theft, for example: It was not intended to restrict or prohibit self-custody.”
For Garcia, it’s neither “necessary nor feasible.” The underlying technology behind crypto wallets means that anyone can create one. “As long as the internet and public blockchains exist, a direct ban on wallet creation and use is not practically enforceable.”
It’s distinctly possible that the ban will not make it into the final version of the Bank of England’s regulations. The bank’s latest Consultation Paper on stablecoins, published in November, does not propose one explicitly.
Any changes would have to go through the standard process, led by the Treasury under the Financial Conduct Authority’s framework as defined by the 2023 Financial Services and Markets Act. “This involves formal consultation, industry input, and iterative rulemaking before any measures can be finalised,” said Garcia.
The best the industry can do to circumvent a ban is to continue engaging with policymakers, per Garcia.
“As participants within the sector, we must demonstrate the benefits of this technology clearly to address the concerns and risks that have been identified, to strengthen the case for proportionate regulation.”
Magazine: AI-driven hacks could kill DeFi — unless projects act now
A key piece of financial infrastructure stitching tokenized assets to traditional banking got a real cross-border test this week.
Ondo Finance said Wednesday it had completed the first near-real-time cross-border redemption of a tokenized U.S. Treasury fund alongside JPMorgan’s blockchain platform Kinexys, payments giant Mastercard, and Ripple.
The transaction settled in under five seconds on the XRP Ledger and involved OUSG, Ondo’s tokenized U.S. Treasury fund built for accredited investors and qualified purchasers.
The pipeline started with Ondo processing the redemption on the XRP Ledger, after which Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network routed the instructions to Kinexys, and JPMorgan delivered the U.S. dollars to Ripple’s Singapore bank account.
The whole sequence happened outside traditional banking windows, the kind of cross-border settlement that typically takes one to three business days through correspondent banks.
“By connecting public blockchain infrastructure with interbank settlement rails, Ondo, Kinexys by JPMorgan, Mastercard, and Ripple are laying the groundwork for 24/7 global markets that never close,” said Ondo President Ian De Bode in a statement.
Markus Infanger, senior VP at RippleX, said the transaction shows institutions can run cross-border tokenized asset moves as a single integrated flow rather than stitching them together through legacy systems.
The pilot lands as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) said earlier this week it would launch its own tokenization service later this year. JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform has now processed over $3 trillion in cumulative transactions, with tokenized deposit volumes across major banks moving to billions of dollars over the past year.
XRP and ONDO were down as much as 2% in the past 24 hours alongside a broader pullback across the crypto market.
What was once viewed as a speculative fringe movement is rapidly becoming part of the world’s financial plumbing, according to executives from Binance, Revolut and Circle (CRCL) speaking at Consensus Miami on Wednesday.
“We were in the Prohibition era,” said Rachel Conlan, chief marketing officer at Binance. “Now we are in the infrastructure phase.”
Conlan said crypto is evolving beyond trading into functional everyday use cases and is “on route to becoming the fabric of everyday society.”
That shift is increasingly visible in consumer finance. Mazen ElJundi, global business head of investments at Revolut, said crypto’s narrative has moved from speculation toward “real-life utility and scaling.”
Revolut, which operates in more than 40 countries and serves over 75 million customers, now integrates crypto into a broader suite of banking services including remittances and stablecoin usage. “Crypto is about banking without borders,” he said.
At Circle, SVP of marketing Tim Queenan said institutions are increasingly exploring how to move core financial infrastructure onchain. “The infrastructure should be boring,” he said. “What you build on top of it is what’s interesting.” Queenan pointed to stablecoins becoming so embedded in payments that many users no longer even think of themselves as crypto users.
The panelists said institutional momentum, from exchange traded fund (ETF) approvals to major asset managers putting money onchain, is reinforcing retail adoption globally.
But challenges remain. Conlan said the industry still needs to reduce friction and make onboarding easier.
Read more: Crypto ETFs go mainstream as traditional finance locks in
WHY THIS MATTERS: This contract serves as a potent microcosm of the larger Core Banking Transformation narrative sweeping through the financial sector. The decision by a 130-year-old, mission-driven institution like Reliance Bank to fully decommission its legacy technology and adopt a vendor’s Cloud-Native SaaS platform signals that agility and operational efficiency are now non-negotiable, even for the most specialized players. The critical takeaway for the industry is not just the technology stack, but the objective: modernization is the necessary prelude to scaling social and ethical impact. By offloading maintenance and leveraging Temenos’ open API architecture, Reliance Bank effectively frees up capital and human resources to focus squarely on expanding its deposit base and funding more social impact businesses. This move proves that the competitive pressure for digital speed is reaching every corner of the market, forcing even those banks with unique, entrenched value propositions to prioritize tech over tradition.
Temenos (SIX: TEMN), a global leader in banking technology, today announced that Reliance Bank, a specialist UK retail and business bank owned by The Salvation Army, has selected Temenos SaaS to power its digital transformation.
Reliance Bank will replace its existing legacy systems with a full suite of services, including core banking, digital and payments, on Temenos SaaS. This will help the bank to improve operational efficiency and enhance customer experience on a secure, scalable service, while creating a more agile digital foundation to support its future growth.
Leveraging Temenos’ UK Model Bank, with pre-configured capabilities specific to the local market, will enable Reliance Bank to develop new products more quickly while reducing the costs and risk of additional software customization. Meanwhile, Temenos’ open, API-based architecture will help the bank to integrate seamlessly with fintech partners to further enhance its capabilities as it looks to expand its customer base.
Founded in 1890 to provide banking services to the Salvation Army and associated organizations, Reliance Bank retains a strong focus on ethical and community banking, prioritizing lending to businesses that deliver a positive social impact in the UK. The bank offers a range of savings accounts for individuals, as well as current accounts, savings and loans for charities and SMEs.
Adopting a SaaS model, with continuous updates, support and maintenance handled by Temenos, will empower Reliance Bank to focus on its customers and social mission, rather than on managing its technology.
Nikki Fenton, CEO, Reliance Bank, commented: “Implementing Temenos SaaS is a key element of Reliance Bank’s digital transformation strategy, providing a resilient, modern infrastructure that will support our growth plans. With Temenos, we’ll be able to scale efficiently and launch customer-centric digital solutions quickly, helping us to grow our deposit base and provide more financial support to charitable and ethical institutions.”
Mark Yamin-Ali, Managing Director, Europe, Temenos, added: “We’re proud to partner with Reliance Bank on this strategic transformation, and support the bank’s mission to deliver a positive societal impact. With its flexible, cloud-native architecture, broad functionality and pre-configured capabilities for the UK market, Temenos SaaS will help Reliance Bank to meet the needs of its specialist customer base with agility and speed. This agreement reflects Temenos’ proven ability to support institutions with specific requirements, as well as our strong track record and continued momentum in the UK.”
FF NEWS TAKE: This partnership is a clear, industry-defining acceleration of the core banking transformation trend. By embracing a modern SaaS model, Reliance Bank isn’t just modernizing; it’s optimizing its entire operational foundation for unprecedented growth and positive social impact. This decisively moves the needle, demonstrating that next-generation cloud-native platforms are the essential launchpad for ethical finance. The industry must now monitor the speed at which this streamlined institution uses its new agility to outpace competitors and expand its specialized lending footprint across the UK.
The crypto rally took a pit stop on Thursday while equities kept zooming higher.
Bitcoin BTC$80,917.45 traded at $80,945 in Asian hours, down 0.7% over 24 hours but still up 6.9% on the week. Ether (ETH) slipped 2% to $2,326, and DOGE$0.1106 was the major laggard, dropping 4.4% to $0.1106 after last week’s run took its 30-day return into the double digits.
XRP and BNB held steadier, with XRP at $1.41 and BNB up 1.3% to $643. Solana zoomed 6.1% on the week to $88.06.
The pullback came as global stock markets ripped to fresh records on U.S.-Iran ceasefire hopes, with reports indicating the two countries are working on a proposal to end the nearly 10-week conflict.
The MSCI All Country World Index advanced 0.3% and MSCI’s Asia gauge jumped 1.9% to a record, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 hitting an intraday high. South Korea passed Canada as the world’s seventh-largest equity market by value, with Softbank surging 18% and TSMC adding 3.3%. Wall Street gauges closed at all-time highs Wednesday with about 80% of S&P 500 companies beating earnings estimates, Bloomberg reported.
Brent crude held under $102 a barrel on speculation a US-Iran deal would help resume oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, while gold zoomed for a third straight day to $4,700 an ounce on Fed rate-cut bets and easing inflation expectations.
FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said in a note that bitcoin’s next test sits at the 200-day moving average around $83,300. A moving average smooths out short-term volatility by averaging an asset’s price over a set period, and the 200-day version is among the most-watched long-term trend gauge among traders.
“A firm consolidation above this level would be a further sign of bullish dominance,” he wrote, adding that the first such sign came one month ago when bitcoin held above the 50-day moving average. He flagged that a short-term profit-taking phase is likely as bitcoin approaches $83,000, “allowing some of the gains to be taken.”
The structural backdrop continues to support the move. Tether’s market cap has grown by $5.9 billion over the past 60 days, per analyst Darkfost, reversing a $2 billion monthly outflow trend that ran through early 2026. Such issuances are considered to be a source of new capital entering the crypto market.
In other developments, Morgan Stanley signalled this week that US banks may eventually be able to hold bitcoin on their balance sheets despite current regulatory barriers, with the bank already running a bitcoin-based ETP and planning to launch spot crypto trading on its wealth platform later this year.
Western Union launched its own stablecoin, USDPT, on Solana to bypass traditional interbank settlement delays.
Elsewhere, BitMine added more than 100,000 ETH for the third straight week, taking its ether reserves to 5.18 million ETH worth roughly $13 billion, or 4.29% of total supply.
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The altcoin market has been one of the most frustrating trades in crypto for the better part of this cycle. Month after month, the expected rotation — capital flowing from Bitcoin into the broader altcoin market — was called and failed to fully materialize. Investors who positioned for an altseason that never arrived watched Bitcoin dominate while their altcoin holdings lagged or declined. The patience required to hold through that disappointment has been real and expensive.
Something in the data is beginning to shift. A CryptoQuant analysis tracking altcoin volume across centralized exchanges has identified an acceleration that stands out from the noise. Excluding the top five assets, altcoins are showing a clear and rising volume trend — the kind of broad-based participation increase that distinguishes a genuine rotation from isolated moves in a handful of large-cap tokens. The signal is not coming from one or two assets. It is coming from the broader market.
The 90-day AltSeason Index has risen rapidly to 28.6, confirming that the behavioral shift visible in the volume data is also registering in the metric specifically designed to measure Bitcoin-to-altcoin rotation. The direction of that index is the signal. Bitcoin season appears to be ending. What is replacing it may be precisely what altcoin holders have been waiting for — though whether this rotation becomes the real altseason the cycle has been missing is the question the data is now beginning to answer.
The Altseason That Never Was — and Why That Makes This One More Significant
The CryptoQuant report adds a historical dimension that reframes the current signal as more meaningful than it would otherwise appear. Throughout this entire cycle, the AltSeason Index never reached the kind of elevated readings that characterized genuine altseasons in previous cycles. The period when the index peaked was early 2024, and even that high-water mark was comparatively modest. The broad-based altcoin outperformance that defines a real altseason simply did not materialize at the scale that previous cycles delivered.
Altcoin Season Index (90 days) | Source: CryptoQuant
That absence is not just a historical footnote. It means that the pent-up rotation that normally gets released during altseason has been building without discharge for an extended period. The capital that typically flows from Bitcoin into the broader altcoin ecosystem during a genuine rotation phase has been accumulating in a cycle that never gave it a proper exit.
The report’s most significant forward claim centers on Ethereum. A nine-year technical convergence is approaching a resolution — a structural setup that the analysis identifies as positioning ETH for a meaningful move higher. Given Ethereum’s role as the gateway asset for the broader altcoin ecosystem, a sustained Ethereum move tends to lift the entire altcoin market alongside it.
The real altseason, by this reading, was not the one that came early and disappointed in 2024. It is the one the data suggests is approaching now — arriving later in the cycle, against a backdrop of unmet expectations, with a technical setup in Ethereum that has not been seen in nearly a decade.
Altcoin Market Cap Tests Key Inflection Zone
The total crypto market cap, excluding the top 10 assets, is attempting to stabilize near the $190–$200 billion range after a prolonged corrective phase. Structurally, the chart shows a clear transition from distribution into a potential accumulation zone, with price holding around the 200-week moving average (red), a level that has historically acted as a long-term pivot for altcoin cycles.
OTHERS index (altcoins) testing resistance | Source: OTHERS chart on TradingView
The recovery from early 2026 lows is constructive but not yet decisive. Price has reclaimed the short-term moving average and is now testing the 100-week (green), which is acting as dynamic resistance. The 50-week (blue) has flattened and is beginning to curl upward, signaling that downside momentum has weakened. However, the broader structure remains neutral until a clean break above the $220–$240 billion region confirms a higher high on this timeframe.
Volume behavior adds nuance. The capitulation phase earlier in the year was accompanied by a clear spike in selling volume, followed by a gradual decline in participation during the recovery. This suggests that, so far, the move higher is not driven by aggressive inflows but by reduced selling pressure.
If this level holds, the structure supports a base-building phase. Failure would likely reopen the $160 billion zone.
Featured image from ChatGPT, chart from TradingView.com
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A video message from a man calling himself Stephen Beard may have been the final move in a long-running crypto con. Days before BG Wealth Sharing went dark, Beard told investors their accounts would be taxed 12% as part of a pending initial public offering for its DSJ Exchange platform.
By Sunday, users on social media had figured out what was happening. By Monday, regulators were warning the public. By Tuesday, the domain was gone — seized by US law enforcement.
Last-Minute Warning Signs Came Too Late For Many
The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions issued an alert Monday, saying it had received complaints from investors and that BG Wealth Sharing was likely operating a scam.
Officials warned that any company requiring investors to deposit more money before they can withdraw their own funds is a strong sign of an advance fee fraud.
That warning followed similar advisories stretching back to 2025, including one from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and another from the Central Bank of Samoa, which in April called the group an outright investment scam.
1/ The $150M+ DSJ Exchange (DSJEX) / BG Wealth Sharing Ponzi scheme collapsed last week. From April 27 – May 3, illicit actors laundered $92M+ across chains to obscure the trail.
Despite those red flags, thousands of people had already sent their money in. BG Wealth Sharing recruited users through heavy social media promotion.
It promised daily returns of 1.3% to 2.6%, referral bonuses, and rank-based rewards — the kind of structure that keeps people recruiting others and brings in fresh funds to pay earlier investors.
According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, total losses from the scheme likely exceed $150 million.
US authorities have seized a domain tied to BG Wealth Sharing, according to the platform.
Between April 27 and May 3, actors connected to the group tried to move more than $92 million in crypto. ZachXBT, working alongside Tether, Binance, OKX, and US law enforcement, helped freeze over $41 million of those funds.
The BG Wealth Sharing website now shows a seizure notice from a joint operation involving Operation Level Up and the Scam Center Strike Force.
BTCUSD trading at $81,698 on the 24-hour chart: TradingView
Victims Recruited Through Social Media, Targeted For Inexperience
ZachXBT noted that many victims were still in denial after the scheme collapsed. According to him, these types of investment frauds deliberately go after inexperienced retail investors through social media, where slick branding and testimonials can look convincing to someone unfamiliar with how these operations work.
The FBI reported in April that Americans lost $21 billion to cyber-enabled crime in a single year, with crypto investment scams making up a significant portion of those losses.
BG Wealth Sharing had been running since at least 2025, and thousands of victim exchange withdrawals were identified in the investigation.
Joint Operation Signals Broader Push Against Crypto Scams
The domain seizure is part of a wider crackdown. The Scam Center Strike Force, which was involved in this operation, has previously taken action against crypto fraud networks in Southeast Asia.
United States authorities have been increasing coordination with exchanges and on-chain investigators to track and freeze funds before they can be fully laundered.
Featured image from MetaAI, chart from TradingView
Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.
Finance Magnates is officially extending its international event platform into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region with the debut of the FM Singapore Summit. Kicking off next week, from May 12 to 14, 2026, at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, the summit introduces a new strategic meeting point for the region’s financial industry.
With the event just days away, late registrations remain open, inviting retail and prime brokers, liquidity providers, banks, hedge funds, wealth and asset management firms, and payment service providers to secure their last-minute participation in what promises to be a landmark gathering for the APAC financial ecosystem.
A strategic hub for APAC expansion
The selection of Singapore as the headquarters for the new summit aligns perfectly with the city-state’s undeniable role as a pivotal regional financial node. Singapore boasts a Tier-1 regulatory framework, cutting-edge infrastructure, and a highly business-friendly environment that naturally attracts global capital. Its robust financial and economic sectors have positioned it as the go-to destination for banking, asset management, and prime brokerage. Highlighting this regional dominance, the market capitalisation of the Singapore Exchange exceeded $644billion in early 2025, significantly outpacing regional competitors. By bringing its established format to this strategic location, Finance Magnates aims to create a highly focused environment for commercial engagement and regional market development.
Laying the groundwork for business
The three-day event is designed specifically for institutional decision-makers and senior executives operating with active commercial mandates in the region. The summit will kick off next Tuesday, May 12, with an exclusive opening networking event at the Paulaner Brauhaus, offering attendees an opportunity to exchange ideas with foreign exchange and fintech leaders in an informal setting. The main exhibition will officially open its doors the following morning at Suntec Singapore. Across its wider portfolio, the Finance Magnates platform has historically connected a global audience of more than 50,000 attendees and 2,000 exhibitors from over 100 countries, setting the stage for upscale deal-making and strategic partnerships in this new APAC edition.
Driving institutional dialogue
In parallel with the expansive deal-making expo, the summit promises two days of live industry sessions and panel discussions featuring prominent thought leaders. The carefully curated agenda prioritizes structured engagement and informed discussions around regional strategy, infrastructure development, and complex regulatory considerations. Hot topics slated for exploration include the APAC liquidity landscape, the real-world application of artificial intelligence for brokers, the ongoing tokenisation revolution, and practical strategies for growing premium client segments. Ultimately, the event provides a vital platform for industry players looking to unlock unique insights, scale their offerings without increasing operational friction, and identify exclusive opportunities across the entire Asia-Pacific region before the doors open next week.
Wall Street’s clearinghouse is working with blockchain developers to bring one of capital market’s least glamorous but most operationally complex functions onchain: corporate actions.
Frank La Salla, CEO of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), said Wednesday at Consensus 2026 in Miami that the market infrastructure giant is collaborating with several layer-1 (L1) blockchain networks to improve how dividend payments, tender offers and other post-trade events could be processed in tokenized markets.
“We are working with some very good L1s right now, who are focused on the ability to process at faster rates, have higher resiliency,” he said.
Currently, the bottleneck is that on most blockchain networks could take a few days to process corporate actions, he pointed out.
“We process millions of dividend payments a day to feed to the industry,” Le Salla said. “We need high-performance L1s to do that.”
DTCC sits at the center of U.S. capital markets infrastructure, processing roughly $20 trillion in Treasury and corporate securities trades each day. The clearinghouse has spent nearly a decade exploring blockchain applications, but La Salla said the technology only became commercially meaningful once real-world use cases began to emerge in the pst few years.
Recently, the firm accelerated its push to modernize market infrastructure with tokenization and blockchain tech. This week, DTCC announced to begin testing its tokenized securities platform in July ahead of a broader rollout in October.
La Salla said collateral movement may become blockchain’s first large-scale institutional use case. Tokenized collateral could allow firms outside U.S. market hours to access liquidity in real time without relying on legacy settlement windows. He described a scenario where firms in Asia could access U.S. dollar on a Sunday in New York by posting tokenized collateral onchain in real-time.
“That is incredibly powerful,” La Salla said.
But he cautioned that blockchain systems still face major hurdles around scalability, liquidity fragmentation and risk management.
One challenge, for example, is netting transactions. Traditional market infrastructure compresses massive trading activity into smaller settlement obligations, reducing capital requirements across the system.
“Blockchain is decentralized,” La Salla said. “Many of the efficiencies that we get in our industry are through concentration of liquidity.”
