The conversation around tokenized assets is changing. After years of pilots and proof-of-concept projects, banks, asset managers, regulators and market-infrastructure providers are increasingly focused on whether blockchain-based financial markets can operate at institutional scale.

That transition will be a central theme at Digital Assets Week 2026, which returns to London with an agenda spanning tokenized securities, private markets, settlement, custody, stablecoins, payments and regulation. The event is bringing together senior representatives from major financial institutions and regulators, reflecting a broader shift in digital assets from experimentation toward integration with traditional capital markets.

Among the confirmed speakers are representatives from the Bank of England, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, HM Treasury, UBS, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Northern Trust, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity International, BNP Paribas, Citi and Barclays, alongside digital-asset infrastructure companies.

Tokenization moves into the financial-market plumbing

The next phase of blockchain adoption in financial services is unlikely to be defined by another wave of experimental cryptocurrency projects.

Instead, the focus is moving toward market infrastructure.

Financial institutions are exploring how tokenization can change the way securities, funds and other assets are issued, traded, settled and administered. The potential benefits include faster settlement, programmable compliance, improved transparency and the ability to operate financial markets beyond traditional business hours.

But those benefits depend on much more than issuing a token.

Institutional adoption requires custody arrangements, investor identity, regulatory controls, liquidity, legal certainty, accounting, market connectivity and operational processes that work across existing financial infrastructure.

Those are among the issues Digital Assets Week 2026 will examine when the event returns to London.

The event’s agenda is built around what organizers describe as the commercialization of asset tokenization, covering the market from issuance and trading through settlement, custody and liquidity.

From pilots to production systems

The financial sector has spent much of the past several years testing blockchain applications.

Banks have experimented with tokenized deposits, institutional settlement networks and digital securities. Asset managers have launched tokenized funds. Market infrastructures have tested distributed-ledger settlement. Regulators have developed frameworks for digital assets and stablecoins.

The question is increasingly whether those experiments can become repeatable production systems.

That requires solving problems that are less visible than the technology itself.

A tokenized bond, for example, still needs a legal framework, investor eligibility controls, custody, settlement and secondary-market liquidity. A tokenized fund needs fund administration, transfer restrictions, valuation and reporting. A blockchain-based payment instrument needs connections to existing financial institutions and compliance systems.

Digital Assets Week’s 2026 agenda reflects that broader infrastructure challenge.

Atomic settlement and 24/7 markets

One of the more consequential themes will be the potential transformation of settlement.

Traditional securities transactions can involve multiple intermediaries and settlement processes that create timing and counterparty risks. Blockchain-based infrastructure introduces the possibility of atomic settlement, in which the transfer of an asset and the corresponding payment occur together under predefined conditions.

That could reduce settlement risk and potentially shorten transaction cycles.

It also raises a bigger question: what happens when financial markets operate continuously?

The combination of tokenized assets, blockchain settlement and digital payment instruments could enable markets that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But continuous trading would also require continuous liquidity, monitoring, risk management, compliance and operational support.

For banks and market infrastructures, 24/7 markets therefore represent an operating-model challenge as much as a technology opportunity.

Regulators are becoming part of the infrastructure conversation

The presence of regulators on the 2026 agenda is particularly significant.

Confirmed speakers include Rachel Blake MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury at HM Treasury; Sasha Mills, Executive Director for Financial Market Infrastructure at the Bank of England; Sumeera Younis, Chief of Operations for the SEC Crypto Task Force; Deepa Raja Carbon, Managing Director and Vice Chairperson at VARA; and Rosemary Hanna, Head of Division for Markets and Funds Policy at the Central Bank of Ireland.

Their participation highlights how closely tokenization’s commercial development is now tied to regulatory infrastructure.

For institutions, regulatory alignment cannot be treated as a final step after a product has been built. Rules around ownership, investor protection, custody, market abuse, stablecoins, capital requirements and cross-border activity can determine whether a blockchain-based market structure is viable in the first place.

That makes regulatory dialogue a component of product design rather than simply a compliance function.

Banks are building the institutional layer

The speaker lineup also illustrates how broadly digital assets are being integrated across major financial institutions.

UBS, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Northern Trust, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Citi and Barclays are represented on the agenda, alongside asset managers including Franklin Templeton, Fidelity International, Union Investment and Invesco.

Their involvement reflects a fundamental change in the digital-asset conversation.

Traditional financial institutions are no longer evaluating blockchain solely as an alternative technology for cryptocurrency markets. Increasingly, they are examining whether distributed ledgers can improve existing capital-market processes.

That includes securities servicing, custody, collateral, fund administration, payments and asset issuance.

The competitive question is shifting accordingly. Financial institutions do not necessarily need to become blockchain companies. They need to determine which parts of their existing infrastructure could benefit from programmable, shared digital records.

Stablecoins connect tokenization to payments

Stablecoins will also have an important role in this transition.

Tokenized securities become considerably more useful when the payment leg can move on compatible digital infrastructure. Stablecoins and tokenized deposits are therefore emerging as potential bridges between blockchain-based assets and conventional financial money.

The issue is not simply speed.

Institutions need to understand who ultimately bears settlement risk, how assets are held, how transactions are reconciled and what happens when a digital payment instrument operates across jurisdictions.

This is one reason tokenization and payments are increasingly being discussed together rather than as separate technology categories.

Liquidity remains the hard problem

Technology can make an asset easier to issue and transfer. It cannot automatically create a market for that asset.

Liquidity remains one of the central challenges facing tokenized securities.

A tokenized private-market instrument may have technically efficient settlement but still struggle to attract buyers. A fragmented ecosystem of blockchain networks can further divide liquidity between venues and jurisdictions.

Interoperability will therefore become increasingly important.

Institutional investors are unlikely to want isolated digital markets. They need infrastructure capable of connecting assets, custodians, trading venues, payment systems and regulatory frameworks.

That makes the architecture underneath tokenization just as important as the token itself.

What the event says about the market

The concentration of banks, regulators, asset managers and infrastructure companies at Digital Assets Week is itself an indicator of where the market is heading.

The industry’s debate is becoming less about whether blockchain technology can represent an asset and more about whether it can support the full lifecycle of a financial instrument.

That includes issuance, ownership, trading, settlement, custody, reporting, compliance and redemption.

For enterprise financial teams, the implication is that tokenization projects should be evaluated as infrastructure programs rather than isolated technology experiments.

The winners may ultimately be the platforms that connect blockchain networks with the existing legal, regulatory and operational machinery of global finance.

Digital Assets Week 2026 is positioned around precisely that transition—from proving that tokenization works to determining how it can work at institutional scale.

Market Landscape

Tokenization is developing across several interconnected markets, including funds, bonds, private credit, equities, commodities and collateral.

Financial institutions are simultaneously exploring blockchain settlement, tokenized deposits, stablecoins and digital custody. The resulting ecosystem is increasingly converging around interoperability and regulatory compatibility.

Companies such as J.P. Morgan, Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, Citi and UBS have all been active in different areas of institutional digital assets, while infrastructure companies are developing custody, compliance, tokenization and settlement technologies.

The major unresolved issues are increasingly commercial rather than purely technical: liquidity, interoperability, legal recognition, regulatory consistency and integration with existing market infrastructure.

Top Insights

• Digital Assets Week 2026 will focus on institutional tokenization, bringing banks, regulators and infrastructure providers together around issuance, settlement, custody and liquidity.
• Atomic settlement and 24/7 trading are emerging priorities, but continuous markets require new approaches to liquidity, compliance, risk management and operational resilience.
• Major banks and asset managers are moving beyond blockchain pilots, exploring tokenized securities, funds, payments and market infrastructure as production applications.
• Regulation is becoming part of digital-asset infrastructure, with policymakers examining how tokenized markets can operate within existing financial-market protections.
• Liquidity and interoperability remain critical challenges, because technically efficient tokenization does not automatically create deep secondary markets or cross-chain connectivity.

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