In July 2025, the US passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, establishing a federal framework for stablecoins, including requirements around reserves, disclosures and regulatory oversight.1 Alongside Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA)2, argued panellists, these developments are beginning to address one of the biggest historical barriers to digital finance: the availability of a trusted settlement asset on-chain.
During the panel discussions, Brown revealed that Clearstream expects to complete its first benchmark sovereign issuance on distributed ledger technology (DLT) infrastructure this year. The company launched its tokenised securities platform, D7 DLT, in November 2025.3
But while issuance may increasingly become digital-native, Brown argued the surrounding ecosystem remains fundamentally hybrid. “The challenge is, how do you deal with the security that’s natively digital when not every market counterparty is able or willing to interact with you in a natively digital way?” he asked. “It means we’re likely going to live with a single liquidity pool in dual settlement environments for some time yet.”
That need for interoperability was echoed by Rowland, who argued that digital asset servicing cannot exist in isolation from the broader custody operating model. “You have to be able to say my traditional fund accounting platform is integrated with my digital asset platform, my data platform is integrated with my digital asset platform, my reporting suite covers everything,” he explained.
On the issue of who runs this platform, the discussion turned to the question of shared infrastructure. McIntosh argued that the industry risks wasting investment by repeatedly rebuilding similar capabilities independently rather than collaborating where appropriate. “Not every institution needs to reinvent the wheel, particularly where infrastructure is no longer a true competitive differentiator,” she said.4