Tags: Security Token, Tokenization, tokens

ASIFMA Covers the State of Play of APAC’s Tokenised Securities Space in New Industry Paper

The Tokenizer July 26, 2021

ASIFMA today published a new paper titled “Tokenised Securities in APAC – A State of Play”. The paper provides updates on key developments in the tokenized securities space and what market participants think about the state of the tokenized securities market and ecosystem. The paper was published as part of ASIFMA’s Tech & Ops Week, a virtual event from 21 – 25 June.

This paper provides a supplementary update to the 2019 paper “Tokenised Securities – A Roadmap for Market Participants and Regulators”, highlighting key developments and emerging trends in Asia’s tokenized securities space. ASIFMA conducted interviews and paper surveys with a wide cross-section of the ecosystem to gather thoughts and opinions of digital asset exchanges, infrastructure providers, technology platforms, issuers, banks and regulators.

The paper focuses on three core aspects of market participants in the tokenized securities space:

What market participants think about the current and future state of the tokenised securities market and ecosystem
The challenges remaining in the adoption of tokenised securities
Success stories and case studies

“Financial firms and issuers have been creating pools of expertise via practical experimentation,” said Laurence Van der Loo, Executive Director of Technology and Operations at ASIFMA. “This has led to a better understanding of the risks, costs, and benefits of the key performance metrics as well as a better understanding of the interaction between DLT networks and adjacent business process and infrastructure.” However, despite the many positive developments, to see tokenized securities reach ‘Main Street’ some remaining issues must be addressed. Several challenges remain in the regulatory space, including the lack of inter-jurisdictional harmonization and taxonomy, as well as historical paper-based requirements and processes. ASIFMA’s Tokenised Securities Taskforce recommends that regulators and authorities continue to collaborate with the industry to supply coordinated guidance on the classification of tokens and continue to work to modernize archaic paper-based requirements which undermine the adoption of
tokenized securities. From an ecosystem perspective, further education, collaboration, and experimentation are needed to address the talent and liquidity gaps and reduce friction in a fragmented ecosystem and facilitate the adoption of tokenized securities.