As the introduction of digital assets become increasingly common, their influence on traditional finance is becoming more notable, blurring the line between two seemingly separate, and arguably parallel, financial instruments.

Think of exchanges that now have a digital asset offering, banking giants which have dedicated units and the wave of experienced personnel who have made the transition from traditional finance to this burgeoning sector.

From the rise of blockchain technology to the proliferation of tokenisation – as well as the increased, yet still debatable, acceptance of cryptocurrencies as ‘legitimate’ assets – the impact of digital assets is evident across several facets of the financial ecosystem. The industry can now differentiate between ‘crypto’ and ‘digital assets’, while the old ‘Wild West’ comparisons for the former have now been replaced with opinions of ‘bad actors, not bad assets’.

What doesn’t seem up for debate is the potential of blockchain and how tokenisation will shape the markets of the future.

“For us, blockchain really is an enabler – looking from an infrastructure, product and a client facing perspective – to make processes in the long run safer, more efficient, while also reducing costs and enabling us to create accessibility, especially for retail investors, to additional products which are not tradable or fungible today,” says Christoph Hock, head of tokenisation and digital assets at Union Investment.

Blockchain, at the highest level, is about providing additional transparency, and with that, the opportunity for composability and less need for reconciliation, argues David Newns, head of SIX Digital Exchange (SDX). However, Newns also highlights the importance of regulation to improve and ensure investor protection within this specific asset class.

“The role that institutions play in this space is to find ways to enhance investor safety. When it comes to crypto assets, the notion that you have regulated institutions which are transparent and compliant with regulations will mean you trust them as a counterparty to provide services,” asserts Newns.

“That gives you the confidence that your assets are safe and that your activities are being conducted in the most fair and equitable way possible.”

The importance of regulation

In addition to helping foster investor protection, regulation in digital assets can help ensure market integrity and promote stability in an increasingly digitised financial landscape. Without appropriate oversight, digital asset markets can be left susceptible to fraud, manipulation and other illicit activities.

Regulators can also help facilitate mainstream adoption by bridging the gap between traditional financial and digital assets, contributing to the long-term sustainability and legitimacy of the digital asset ecosystem.

“Our key focus, as of now, is on crypto securities and that’s where governance is clearly required,” emphasises Hock. “All the negative issues around crypto, like FTX and Bankman-Fried which came up in the past, are based on human fraud. It’s not malfunction of the blockchain but human misbehaviour, in combination with a lack of regulation, for example in the US. Therefore, governance is key to ensure that the trust our investors have in us as an asset manager can be fulfilled.”

Impacts on infrastructure

Market infrastructure is being reshaped by digital assets through the introduction of new methodologies for ownership, transferability and transparency. Unlike traditional financial assets, digital assets leverage blockchain technology, enabling peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries.

The continued evolution of digital assets is helping catalyse the transformation of market infrastructure, shaping a way for a more inclusive, efficient and resilient financial landscape. However, there are still limitations as to how much can be gained in terms of infrastructure in the traditional financial landscape – one being the cost of any change.

“Typically, trading a digital asset requires new functionality such as a digital custodian, new post-trade integrations and/or trading connectivity – anytime a traditional financial firm has to put something like that in place, there has to be a really strong commercial case for why they do that because it’s timely, costly and expensive,” explains Duncan Trenholme, global co-head of digital assets at TP ICAP.

“The reality is if you are going to bring liquidity in from the traditional markets then the new digital trading experience has to be dramatically efficient or cheaper for clients to change their infrastructure.”

With developments linked to blockchain and digital assets surging and subsequently presenting various use cases and areas of improvement for the traditional finance landscape, the phrase ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’ comes into mind. Traditional financial markets have existed for much longer than digital assets and because of that, any major shifts should be carefully considered.

“Looking at the intersection between blockchain and traditional banking, traditional banking has so much efficiently already in it, despite what you might sometimes hear. It’s highly optimised, it’s very efficient, but there are areas that we can certainly bring significant benefits through blockchain technology,” highlights Newns.

“To get the fundamental benefits, it’s hard work and it’s all about building and getting all the various participants comfortable. In crypto you’re taking traditional structures and you’re trying to accommodate a new asset class into them. In tradfi, however, we’re trying to get an existing asset class and then bring it into a new technology, which can be difficult.”

Where parallels meet 

Traditional finance and digital assets typically operate as two parallel and distinct markets at present, but increasingly there is overlap between the two. Settlement, something that tends to be instant within digital assets – particularly when it comes to cryptocurrencies – is something we see influencing the traditional financial landscape.

However, there is still a lot of work to be done on either connecting the two systems or uplifting the traditional financial systems to be able to support digital assets.

“In traditional finance, we’ve moved to shorter and shorter settlement times. Within securities markets we are currently discussing how to move to T+1 settlement from T+2 and make sure we avoid trades failing at scale,” says Trenholme. “Within crypto they’ve started with the premise of moving collateral within minutes or hours. Crypto challenges the way that traditional markets operate and have grown to operate over the years.”

Looking at what can be learned from digital assets, legacy systems and the need for increased modernisation to bolster efficiency comes into play. Limitations linked to message-based architecture is something market participants are fully aware of, and something that the seemingly parallel nature of digital assets emphasises even more.

“You just can’t do the sort of composable transactions and achieve the reduction in requirement for reconciliation when you’re still sending messages from one platform to another platform. We’ve optimised, but at the same time are inherently constrained by the fact that it’s not instantaneous,” says Newns.

Cryptocurrencies, specifically, have been viewed as attractive due to their ability to be traded 24/7, including on weekends and holidays. Unlike traditional financial markets, such as the equities space, cryptocurrencies are not limited by set trading hours and can operate continuously. Given that they are decentralised and traded across a range of global exchanges, they allow participants to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies at any time.

Whether traditional finance will mirror the around-the-clock model is yet to be seen, with varying arguments on whether demand for it exists and whether or not the shift is even feasible.

“You do see some discourse in the news about clients wanting to shorten market hours in certain asset classes, so we should challenge the assumption that just because we can operate markets 24/7, as we see with crypto, that we should operate markets 24/7,” argues Trenholme.

“Ultimately, if you think about the notional of assets that have been tokenised today, it’s still a drop in the ocean compared to the size of traditional finance. As such, it is easy to have a certain scepticism about how meaningful and relevant this could be if you are sat within a traditional business. There’s a lot of promise, and the technology could improve the market considerably, but it hasn’t reached a scale yet where it’s forced clients to alter the way that they trade. That tipping point has not yet been reached.”

Moving forward

Despite the current operation of digital assets and traditional finance as two separate parallels, digital assets’ influence is evident in the increasing integration of blockchain technology into financial infrastructure.

Institutions are exploring tokenisation of assets, converting traditional assets into digital tokens to enhance liquidity and improve accessibility. 

Hock tells The TRADE that Union Investment are one of the first asset managers in this area combining the traditional asset world with the tokenised world.

“For us, our view is that within three to five years of tokenisation of assets – not only of traditional assets but also of products which are not tradeable and are not fungible today – this will become a new normal. Important to highlight that we are not only talking about assets on chain, but also cash on chain, i.e. e-money. This consideration will be most powerful.

“Looking five years down the road, I’m sure tokenisation will become a key topic here for the entire ecosystem and has the potential to be a disruptor and a game changer for the financial industry.”

Digital assets are here to stay and their influence on traditional finance is undeniable. Although still a small fraction of the entire financial ecosystem, it’s clear that digital assets, the innovation linked with them, and the lessons learned from the asset class are influencing the way in which future developments within traditional will be approached.

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All members of SDX will have access to the service from 1 February 2023.

The service will allow issuers to issue EUR denominated bonds under Swiss law, which will allow for new possibilities for market participants in the digital asset space.

SDX members trading in bonds issued and settled in EUR will benefit from atomic trading and settlement via SDX-CSD, the first regulated CSD based on distributed ledger technology (DLT).

SDX-CSD members will be able to initiate a tokenisation and de-tokenisation of tEUR (tokenised EUR) through a connection to euroSIC.

“We are harnessing distributed ledger technology for future service offerings which are now attractive and applicable to the EUR market,” said David Newns, head of SDX.

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How did SDX get started?

The SDX project has been going on for about four years. Back in 2018 SIX Group decided that DLT blockchain technology was going to be revolutionary in the financial markets space and bring significant benefits to the financial market infrastructure (FMI) space in particular. So we decided to set up a digital securities exchange, leveraging that technology to add value to existing asset classes that were already being traded on the traditional infrastructure, with the hypothesis that in a few years’ time, this would be the infrastructure upon which all activities would eventually be conducted.  

We have built an organisation, discrete with SIX Group, connected in terms of control environment, legal etc, given independence in terms of our own technology, market and sales, and we have built out a CSD and exchange built on a permission-based private ledger technology from R3 called Corda. Then in September 2021, we got our license to operate as a CSD and exchange from Swiss regulator FINMA and went live with our first bond issuance on the platform. Since then, we have been doing a lot of work on interoperability to build that migration path for the markets to adopt the new technology, and we have also set up a separate Web3 focussed business line to provide services for institution’s activity on public blockchains and have recently gone live with an institutional grade crypto custody platform and a non-custodial staking service.  

What was the journey towards the recent digital bond issuance?  

On the FMI side, the big changes and enhancements have led up to the recent issuance of the UBS bond. Back in November last year, to issue or trade any bond on SDX you had to be a member of SDX, so to invest in a bond issued on SDX you had to have one of the SDX members as your intermediary. We have made significant strides since then to expand that investor community and increase that liquidity that a bond issuer could reach when carrying out a digital issuance on SDX. That has been achieved by the onboarding of traditional infrastructure onto SDX. That’s what triggered the ability by UBS to do the latest bond issuance. Now you can issue a digitally native bond on SDX, and it can be traded and settled on SDX, or it can be traded and settled on the traditional SIX infrastructure as well as over the counter (OTC).  

The big difference is that on SDX, you’re trading and settling a token, based on DLT technology, and trading and settlement is atomic – they are a single indivisible step. On the traditional exchange there is a T+2 settlement cycle. That offers a huge benefit – as a member of SDX, UBS can trade and settle atomically, but as an issuer, they can reach the entire community that exists on the traditional exchange as well – so there is no downside, only upside, to doing the issuances on SDX. That’s the first major step in building these vital bridges between the two worlds.  

What’s the importance of interconnectivity between traditional and digital infrastructure? 

Next year, aiming at the end of Q2, we will have onboarded SDX onto the traditional SIX infrastructure – so the other way round. At that point, we will be able to mobilise assets listed on the traditional exchange and enable them to be traded and settled atomically on SDX. At that point we will have eliminated the other downside– of there not being the whole universe of assets available on SDX that exist on the traditional infrastructure, and squared that circle, bringing that benefit to members of SDX as well. That migration path between traditional and digital is then smoothed completely.  

As well as providing this innovation around existing securities, we’re also building new markets on the platform. We did the first digital bond issuance on a regulated FMI, but in June of this year we also did the first digital equity issuance as well, as part of the private market ecosystem that we are building out. The next equity issuance will probably come in Q1 of next year.  

Was the development of SDX driven by investor demand?  

SIX Group is owned by approximately 120 banks in Switzerland, so they determine what we do. We are very much driven by the appetite amongst our member banks for creating this infrastructure, and there is tremendous excitement around adopting the benefits of atomic settlement across that community. If you think about what that means for them, it means the elimination of central clearing – because you don’t have to put up capital for clearing. You don’t have to collateralise your trade for the T+2 cycle, because that settlement happens instantaneously. And in a rising interest rate environment, both of those T+2 requirements become less and less attractive, because it just means you’re paying more and more to trade the same amount. In addition, with atomic settlement there is a huge reduction in the need for reconciliation, because the trades are happening immediately, so there is less requirement for middle- and back-office reconciliation.  

There’s a significant reduction in capital allocation and overall costs associated with today’s trading, within this DLT infrastructure. That’s incredibly attractive as a benefit already, and then on top of that, you’ve eliminated risk associated with the settlement cycle, because it happens instantaneously. The cost of settlement failures is extremely high, it runs into the billions of dollars every year. The overall settlement cost of securities transactions globally is something in the region of $30 billion, not even including the cost of doing other activities associated with that, like cross-border payments, which is now over $100 billion per annum. There are efficiencies, risk reductions, and cost savings associated with leveraging DLT infrastructure. But there has to be this migration path. UBS couldn’t have done an issuance on the platform without being able to reach all the liquidity that they could on the traditional infrastructure. Thus, the bridge that we’re putting into place – so you can do a digital issuance but reach investors on both sides.   

What are your plans for the future? 

This is a long-term play. SIX Group sees this as being the infrastructure of the future, and it’s taken us decades to get to where we are today, with the current electronification of the capital markets. It will not take us decades to get to DLT-based infrastructure in the future, but it is a multi-year process that requires very substantial and robust foundations. This isn’t a get-rich quick scheme. It’s about building something robust, regulated, and transparent.  

We’re onboarding more members, including Berner Kantonalbank (BEKB) off the back of the recent private equity issuance, and three other banks are also in the pipeline going through the initial AML/KYC process. 

Onboarding onto an FMI is a rather longer process. Compared to an unregulated platform, which you can do in an afternoon, these take multiple months to complete, both in terms of legal and compliance, integration and conformance testing. So we will onboard members at a relatively steady pace. If we get to double digits in a year, that would be great. That’s why the bridge is helpful as an intermediary step – to help those are already on board to issue instruments, which then encourage others to join. It’s now a question of getting the 100+ members of the traditional exchange and CSD to become members on SDX.  

What impact has the FTX chaos had on your operations?  

Could we have predicted that FTX would be the next shoe to drop? No. But I don’t think anyone was in any doubt that there was more to come, in terms of the shake-out of that crypto native space. The problems we are seeing there today are very much CeFi problems, but they are CeFi problems on steroids, because of the lack of regulation. Whether it’s a lack of transparency, or due diligence between counterparties, or clarity of service offerings such as custody – they aren’t related to the underlying technology, they’re totally unrelated to blockchain and DLT. In fact, decentralised exchanges are being used as examples where in fact there haven’t been any issues, because when using the technology “naked” (as it were), it works very effectively. These issues are associated with a repeat of the same sort of challenges we had back in 2000 with the dot com collapse, or 2008 – where people behaved badly because they could hide what they were doing because of a lack of transparency, accountability and regulation in the marketplace.  

If there is anything good that comes out of the FTX downfall, it will be to highlight the importance of trusted counterparties, transparency, clarity, and well-thought-out regulation.  

It’s key that not all regulation is the same across jurisdictions. SIX Group has got to where it is today with SDX because the regulation in Switzerland is very clear and quite advanced – the regulatory environment lends itself very well to the use of DLT. What’s missing globally, however, is clarity around custody. Globally, there needs to be regulatory clarity about what it means to provide custody and – crucially – a separation of duties between exchange and custody.  

What we’ve seen in a lot of instances is the segregation of funds issue – that’s reappearing as a challenge, and we don’t yet have the investor protection that you see in other asset classes, which is holding back trust and therefore, inevitably, adoption.  

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“The first example of an issuance of the dual-listed bond illustrates both the increasing attractiveness of issuing digital securities on SIX Digital Exchange as well as representing a significant step forward in the evolution of the SDX platform,” said David Newns, head SIX Digital Exchange, speaking exclusively to The TRADE.

He described the development, involving close cooperation with SIX Swiss Exchange and SIX SIS, as “in line with our long-term planning and SIX’s mandate to develop and operate innovative infrastructure services”.

The digital bond has the same instrument structure, legal status and rating as a traditional UBS AG senior unsecured note. With a single ISIN number, the bond is also intended to be listed and tradeable at both SIX Digital Exchange and SIX Swiss Exchange.

Through atomic settlement technology, settlement via SDX CSD is instant and automatic and does not require a central clearing counterparty. Investors will, however, have the ability to automatically settle and clear the bond on either SDX CSD directly or on SIX SIS via the operational link formally announced in early October.

At the time, David Hatton, head Digital Securities at SDX explained that the link enables digital CHF bonds natively issued on SDX CSD to be held and settled at SIX SIS. “This in turn opens future digital bond issuance to the broader CHF investor base, whilst laying the platform for a fully integrated CHF denominated digital bond market,” he noted.

“We are proud to leverage distributed ledger technology to launch the inaugural UBS digital bond. This shows our commitment to support the development of new financial market infrastructure,” said Beatriz Martin, UBS group treasurer. “UBS is committed to using technology not just as an enabler, but to making it a true differentiator for UBS.”

The digital bond will be eligible for the Swiss Bond Index (SBI) alongside all other UBS AG senior unsecured notes which are listed on SIX.

According to SIX, the dual-listed digital bond establishes a migration path for the market to move from issuing traditional securities to issuing natively digital securities on fully regulated blockchain based financial markets infrastructure.

A spokesperson for SDX added: “The trading and settlement of bonds and, at a later stage, other asset classes will be gradually transferred to DLT. SIX will enable market participants to trade and settle bonds on both SIX Swiss Exchange or SIX Digital Exchange during this transition phase, depending on their preference, thus increasing acceptance and trust among market participants.”

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Summarising the benefits of DLT, David Nicol, chief executive of LedgerEdge, said: “We use DLT as a tool to give users more control of their data, more nuanced workflows and, in the end, better execution.”

Christopher Hock, head of multi-asset trading at Union Investment, highlighted three key topics that the firm was focusing on in this space. This included: “DLT from an infrastructure perspective, trading traditional assets in a tokenised format and finally, utilising the opportunity to significantly see an expansion of the trader universe.

“Going forward we will have some chances to have non-fungible products which fit into our investment universe to make thing more tradable.”

“This new DLT-based platform allows us to think and develop new user business cases,”

Given developments within the DLT, blockchain and tokenisation space over the last few years, panellists suggested that the industry should maintain a forward-looking approach to allow innovation to continue to exist.

“This new DLT-based platform allows us to think and develop new user business cases,” said Martin Weithofer, head of EMEA sales and relationship management at Six Digital Exchange.

“Market participants should not make the mistake of simply copying and pasting what has been done over the last five years. The next five to ten years will look different and this new technology, this new platform, allows the implementation of much more user business cases.”

Looking at future developments and innovation with this space, Hock mentioned increased focus on a topic which may go live in the next two years – tokenised funds. “At the moment, all our fund products are still based on paper documents which are with a central securities depository (CSD). Going forward we will also consider issuing tokenised funds as well as a non-fungible token at later stage,” said Hock.

“Looking at token economy, we clearly consider this to be a key game changer with a highly disruptive potential and for us it’s really key to be involved in all these developments.”

Echoing Hock’s sentiments on how fund products are still handled manually, Nicol highlighted aims to approach the corporate bond trading market with a fresh perspective.

“We looked at the fact that in 2020, 30-40% of trades were still handled over voice or chat systems, rather than electronically,” said Nicol.

“We thought the corporate bond market was quite standardised. It’s a standard product, there’s a lot of automation potential there, but there’s still this kind of interaction and trust problem that keeps many of the functions very manual, making many of the interactions rather inefficient. We broke it down and we want to give users on both sides of the market a fundamentally better experience.”

Speaking on the importance of continued innovation and development, Hock concluded that “for the last couple of years, technology has been playing a key role in the trading space and without technology, without heavy investments in technology, you can’t run trading successfully regardless of whether you are buy-side or sell-side”.

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Short-term financing markets today have an estimated $65 trillion in annual transaction volumes worldwide. However, legacy systems and a lack of global standardisation mean these markets are widely fragmented and inefficient, causing liquidity silos.

eNote, which is FQX’s infrastructure for a standardised, digital debt instrument, works alongside SDX’s digital financial market infrastructure to break these silos. As a result, locked up liquidity is released.

An eNote serves as an unconditional agreement to pay a specific amount to another party at a specific date in the future and can be modularly structured to fit any financing purpose. The eNote is blockchain-based and is easily transferable to any third party such as an investor.

When compared to other financing tools, FQX claim eNotes excel through their modularity and global transferability, based on a standardised legal framework.

Single eNotes are stored as NFTs on a blockchain. An issuer can obtain financing in a manner that resembles commercial papers through issuing multiple eNotes.

“Bringing eNotes on to SDX is a crucial step for FQX on our mission to creating the global debt infrastructure for the future of finance, allowing institutional investors to directly access eNotes via their custody banks,” said Benedikt Schuppli, co-founder & co-CEO of FQX.

In September last year, SIX gained regulatory approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), which authorised SIX Digital Exchange AG to act as a central securities depository – a market first for digital securities.

A spokesperson for SIX stated that the authorisation enables SDX to go live with a fully regulated, integrated trading, settlement, and custody infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology for digital securities.

“As the world’s first fully regulated and fully integrated securities settlement and custody platform to trade, settle and custodise digital assets we at SDX we have built the strongest and safest foundation upon which to build a global liquidity network for digital assets,” said David Newns, head of SIX Digital Exchange.

“The network will be built by establishing strategic partnerships with providers such as FQX. SDX’s collaboration with FQX thus represents a key step in the building out of our ecosystem by providing trading, settlement and custody of FQX eNotes on SDX.”

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The bond, which was joint lead managed by Credit Suisse, UBS, and Zürcher Kantonalbank, was issued in two parts. Part A, the digital or tokenised part of the bond, accounted for 100 million Swiss francs of the total issuance volume. The remaining CHF 50 million, was allocated to the traditional part of the bond (Part B).

A SIX spokesperson told The TRADE it decided to issue the bond in two parts to help local banks and investors familiarise themselves with the new DLT platform and how it works. SIX announced it was building a digital exchange using DLT back in 2018. The first prototype of the new Digital Exchange went live in 2019, but it took until September this year for the exchange to be licensed by Finma, the Swiss financial regulator.

The spokesperson said the biggest advantage of DLT versus traditional post-trade infrastructure is that trades settled instantly, instead of T+2, which creates counterparty risk for exchange operators and uses up a lot of liquidity.

“This is an innovative and historic transaction as it is the first of its kind in the world on a regulated and fully integrated digital exchange,” said Daniel Schmucki, CFO at SIX. “The transaction was supported by key Swiss market participants and has demonstrated that the investor base is convinced of the innovative power of the Swiss financial market and of the supporting role of SIX in the transformation and development of the financial centre.”

Thomas Zeeb, global head of exchanges at SIX said the first issue of a tokenised bond on the SIX Digital Exchange as well as its listing and placement in the market proves that DLT also works well in the highly regulated capital markets.

The bond offering was oversubscribed several times and attracted strong interest from a broad institutional investor base in Switzerland. The company will use the net proceeds of the bond placed for general financing purposes of SIX.

Having proved the platform works, SIX says it looks forward to future issuances on its Digital Exchange by market participants as their confidence in issuing tokenised assets grows.

In August this year, Switzerland, which is home to Crypto Valley in Zug, became one of the first countries in the world to pass the distributed ledger technology (DLT) blanket act, which selectively adapts 10 existing federal laws. The legislation improves the conditions for blockchain and DLT companies in Switzerland.

The Swiss DLT bill, which came into force on February 1, this year, also clarified the legal framework for tokenised securities.

SIX emerged as a pioneer among incumbent exchange operators in the digital asset infrastructure space when it revealed its plans for a fully integrated trading, settlement and custody infrastructure for digital assets back in 2018.

However, despite achieving a number of milestones since then, the exchange has experienced a series of leadership changes at the very top. David Newns became the exchange’s third CEO in just over 18 months when he replaced Tim Grant in August.

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David Newns will become the exchange’s third CEO in just over 18 months, replacing Tim Grant who will step down. Subject to approval from FINMA, Switzerland’s financial regulator, Newns will assume the role from October. 

Newns previously spent over 15 years at State Street in London, where he was most recently global head of GlobalLink Execution Services, overseeing the bank’s FX electronic trading platforms. He also founded Currenex in 1999, which was acquired by State Street in 2007 for $564 million. 

According to SDX, Newns’s mandate will be to take the exchange into its next phase of full operations and growth. 

“I believe that this is the perfect moment for our industry to redefine how it engages with its clients and stakeholders and, in turn, empowers them to serve their clients. SDX is in the ideal industry sweet-spot to achieve this and I’m looking forward to driving its further growth and development,” said Newns on his appointment.  

SDX has received a draft financial market infrastructure (FMI) licence from FINMA, and the exchange said it expects to receive formalisation of its licences soon. 

“Once we receive regulatory approval, we will need to be ready to ramp up operations, client onboarding and deployment,” said Thomas Zeeb, chairman SDX and member of the executive board, SIX. 

“As with any infrastructure, success will be defined by scale, and our challenge going forward will be to develop the relationships and partnerships – ecosystem, if you will – that will enable us to offer our clients what they are really looking for in challenging times: New services and products for their clients.” 

Grant leaves SDX having led several key projects aimed at developing the trading, settlement and custody infrastructure for digital assets. He joined in March last year from R3 Labs, of which he was the former CEO. 

In December, the exchange made an investment in Custodigit, the joint venture created by Swisscom and Sygnum in 2018, to support the complete investment value-chain for digital assets. SIX also participated in a consortium, which included the Bank for International Settlements, where it successfully completed a proof-of-concept experiment that integrates tokenised digital assets and central bank money. 

“I thoroughly enjoyed working with Tim and his team at SDX and now look forward to working with David as we take SDX into the next stage of maturity and development. David brings with him the background and experience to take us forward and extend the reach of the SDX platform throughout the industry,” added Zeeb. 

Last month, SDX recruited Michele Curtoni, another State Street alumnus and a former vice president of digital product development and DLT, as head of strategy. 

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