Tokenised assets to play a role in the future of the securities industry
We were delighted to welcome our clients and other stakeholders to our market advisory virtual event, Strate Nexus, on Tuesday.
Our guest speaker Dominic Hobson, co-founder of the Future of Finance and frequent contributor to the Financial Times, BBC and Financial News, gave deep insights into tokenised assets, why they matter and how they may impact South Africa. He left us with a range of questions to think about from the point of view of stock exchanges, asset or wealth managers, custodian banks, central securities depositories, central counterparty clearing houses and payments bank or payments service providers.
Hobson warned against complacency when it comes to initial coin offerings (ICOs), blockchain and decentralised finance (DeFi ) as the underlying social forces and technology which drives them are “remorseless”.
Hobson ran a poll of today’s audience and found that one in five attendees worked for a company that is brokering or investing in crypto-currency. While small, this is a growing area.
Hobson also considered the future of tokenised assets –digital assets created on a distributed ledger or blockchain, which represent either digital or physical assets. He believes tokenised assets will create whole new asset classes and have “immediate and profound consequences” for the securities industry everywhere.
Andre Nortje, Strate CEO, said Strate is looking in-depth at the future of tokenised assets in relation to a CSD in South Africa. We will share our insights on this topic in more detail in future.
Gregory Naicker, Head of CSD Services, gave an update on our e-Voting service, explaining Strate has seen an increase in market interest from clients who want to overhaul their paper-based voting systems to a seamless, digital experience.
As one client put it: “Strate’s e-Voting solution provides ease in managing what traditionally was a complex, extremely manual and error prone process.”
Thank you to all participants who joined us today.
