Institutional Digital Assets Handbook 2023

After initial hesitancy, interest in digital assets from institutional market participants has grown over the past three to four years. Early focus inevitably centred on the market opportunities presented by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But this has evolved into a broad acceptance of a potentially meaningful role for digital assets in institutional markets.

It’s now realistic to believe that in the future, all types of assets could be issued natively on blockchains or represented in tokenised format. Institutions have begun to recognise that digital assets could play a role in their own capital adequacy compliance activities, by allowing asset owners to unlock the value held in previously difficult-to-value assets.

This A-Team Handbook describes the current state of play for institutional digital assets. It explores the emerging regulatory environment and explains how it will impact firms’ approaches as they seek to add cryptocurrencies to their portfolios of asset classes and leverage tokenisation and other new practices for wider benefit. Finally, it examines the technology and data requirements for firms seeking to participate in the digital assets segment.

Topics covered include:

• What are digital assets?
• What is DLT or blockchain technology?
• Benefits and risks of digital assets
• What is driving institutional interest?
• State-of-play on institutional participation in digital assets
• Need for regulatory clarity
• Infrastructure/market structure challenges
• Governance
• Exchanges and connectivity
• Order and execution management systems
• Price formation, market data and liquidity
• Reference data, symbologies, taxonomy and standardisation
• Automating post-trade workflow
• Regulatory Landscape