Making tokenised financial assets usable as collateral could give banks and prime brokers a larger role in financing onchain markets. The opportunity extends from lending against those assets to reducing the collateral clients need to post upfront through faster responses to margin calls. That financing proposition emerged from a TOKEN2049 Singapore panel with executives from FalconX, Chainlink and Ripple Prime, moderated by Nasdaq’s Roland Chai. The discussion also exposed practical constraints, including cross-chain security, the trade-off between faster settlement and netting, and the demands of operating continuously. Joshua Lim, Global Head of Markets at FalconX, an institutional digital asset prime broker, said activity in real-world assets (RWA) on crypto-native venues had been close to zero a year earlier. Tokenised equities had since reached a few billion dollars, while perpetual futures linked to commodities, equity indices and individual stocks were generating tens of billions of dollars in daily trading volume. Chai, Executive Vce President and Head of Digital Liquidity Networks at Nasdaq, contrasted crypto-native activity measured in billions with conventional US equity trading measured in trillions. “We’re talking about billions now, but institutional is trillions,” he said. Cboe Global Markets reported average daily traded value of $1.1 trillion across US equities in 2025. Tokenised assets need financing utility Lim described using financial assets as collateral as “the most powerful motivator of tokenisation”. Permissionless markets, he argued, could connect tokenised assets with lenders who otherwise could not finance them. If markets relied purely on centralised systems and rails, “you could argue the existing infrastructure that we have today is sufficient”. Lim also highlighted the potential for tokenisation to broaden cross-border access to equity markets. Andrew McCormick, Head of Institutional and Market Development at Chainlink, a blockchain data and interoperability network, said tokenised funds needed to become usable for lending, borrowing and margin. He cited the Collateral AppChain of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). In May 2026, DTCC announced plans to integrate Chainlink infrastructure into the platform for near real-time collateral management, with the platform expected to go live in the fourth quarter. “When firms like Nasdaq and the DTCC are moving in this direction, all of the thousands of broker-dealers and banks and asset managers that are connected to Nasdaq are along for the ride too,” he said. For Lim, the additional value came from widening participation in financing. Tokenisation on existing centralised rails could support familiar use cases, while permissionless markets could connect assets with new sources of lending capital. Prime brokers connect collateral with credit Making assets usable as collateral also raises the question of who supplies the credit against them. Lim said crypto lending had shifted from the unsecured structures of the previous cycle towards prime brokers intermediating credit for hedge funds and asset managers. FalconX already sourced part of that capital onchain through Ethena, the creator of the USDe synthetic dollar. In August 2026, the two firms announced a $1 billion secured lending facility funded by assets backing USDe. The next step, Lim said, would be to “get banks and other more traditional financial sponsors to underwrite these types of credit extension products into crypto”. Michael Higgins, International Chief Executive Officer of Ripple Prime, Ripple’s institutional prime brokerage business, said cash and tokenised equity markets remained fragmented at this early stage. Market makers and liquidity providers helped connect these markets, while prime brokers and clearing firms provided financing and intermediation in traditional finance. Ripple Prime was targeting this credit provision layer, drawing on Ripple’s balance sheet, which Higgins described as key to unlocking the market. The FalconX arrangement illustrates an existing channel from crypto-native capital into institutional lending. Lim’s proposed next step would bring traditional financial institutions into the funding of that activity. Faster collateral movement changes margin economics For clients, the benefit could also come through the amount of collateral required to support a portfolio. Higgins identified two benefits for prime brokers, faster collateral settlement and a shorter margin period of risk (MPOR). Margin requirements partly depended on how quickly clients could meet calls, and fiat top-ups typically took a day. Faster collateral movement could therefore reduce upfront margin requirements, which Higgins described as “a huge step forward” from a risk perspective. He cautioned against moving too far towards fully atomic settlement, which could reduce opportunities to offset obligations through netting. Shorter settlement windows could preserve some of those efficiencies. McCormick recalled liquidating positions when clients could not be reached for margin calls. He said automating the process through smart contracts could improve the experience for clients. The potential efficiency comes from changing how collateral is delivered and managed, as well as how much must be posted. Higgins’ caution also makes settlement design part of that calculation. Higgins also stressed that counterparty credit risk remained in the market. Faster collateral movement could improve the management of exposures without eliminating the risk of a counterparty failing. Mobility introduces security and issuance questions Realising those efficiencies across multiple blockchain networks introduces questions about connectivity and security. Chai questioned whether global systemically important banks would put their assets on a few trusted blockchains or operate across many. Drawing on recent conversations with banks, McCormick expected a multichain environment. Institutions might start with one or two blockchains but would avoid committing permanently to a single network. “A bank doesn’t want to choose their chain forever,” he said. Higgins agreed that client demand would push banks to evolve, while acknowledging the risks involved. Institutional interest was also extending to decentralised finance (DeFi). “What encourages me the most and also surprises me the most is banks wanting to go into DeFi,” McCormick said. He said Chainlink was meeting the world’s largest banks weekly about tokenised products for use in DeFi pools and as collateral, and expected this to become routine for large institutions within about a year. Lim was more cautious about the security of moving assets between networks. Blockchain bridges carried their own trust assumptions and vulnerabilities, he said, while centralised issuers such as Circle offered some protection by minting and redeeming across chains. The industry had yet to resolve the trade-off between unrestricted mobility and security, though he favoured continued experimentation over static infrastructure. Issuance raised a separate question about which assets could circulate. Lim distinguished between an intermediary holding underlying securities and issuing tokens against them, potentially without the issuer’s consent, and an issuer working with its transfer agent to create an official tokenised ownership record. He expected both to persist, with highly regulated, issuer-controlled tokenised securities alongside more freely transferable instruments on permissionless platforms, much as regulated and less regulated models already coexisted in stablecoins and crypto exchanges. These are distinct considerations for institutions. Moving a token between networks raises security questions; the way it is issued determines the structure through which investors hold their exposure. Continuous markets require institutional readiness Technical connectivity alone would not equip banks to support these markets around the clock. Higgins said the risks weighed roughly equally, but singled out operational readiness. For global systemically important banks, moving from business hours to continuous markets meant staffing legal, risk and compliance functions over weekends, a requirement he described as “underestimated”. Technology could be adapted, he argued, but each institution would have to build the operating capabilities itself. McCormick, a former lawyer, identified regulation as the biggest risk. “The biggest risk is every two or four years we have a flip-flop,” he said. Institutions needed durable rules covering not only whether an asset was a security or a commodity, but also disclosures, trade reporting and other obligations, before committing substantial capital and staff. He cited the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, after which banks and other financial institutions announced stablecoin plans within weeks. “None of that happens, I believe, without the GENIUS Act,” he said. Regulatory developments were continuing even without comprehensive legislation. Higgins noted the lack of progress on the CLARITY Act and pointed to a five-year SEC exemption. On 17 September 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a five-year conditional exemption for certain tokenised stock trading venues. It required venues to give issuers an opportunity to object before trading third-party-tokenised versions of their shares, a safeguard relevant to the issuance model Lim described. Regulatory fragmentation compounded the challenge. Higgins said differences in market regulation and taxation across jurisdictions remained difficult for global firms to navigate, although the US codification of tax treatment had been a major step forward. McCormick noted that the US alone had 50 state securities regulators, while Chai observed that Europe and Asia faced similar divergence among national regulators. Faster collateral movement could improve margin efficiency, but it would not by itself bring bank financing onchain. Lim’s proposed next step, attracting traditional financial institutions to underwrite credit, would require banks to assess the assets and counterparties they financed, alongside the security and operational demands of continuous markets.
