FMI-Standards-WP
The whitepaper, jointly authored by DTCC, Clearstream and Euroclear, argues that financial market infrastructures (FMIs) are uniquely positioned to drive the next phase of digital asset adoption. It begins by recalling FMIs' historic role in dematerialising securities and delivering resilient, scalable market infrastructure. The paper then outlines how distributed ledger technology (DLT) and tokenised assets are delivering early operational and liquidity benefits, but that current deployments remain fragmented, costly, and limited in scale. It highlights market data (e.g., $1.3 bn of digital bonds issued, 160 k digital equities traded daily, $50 bn daily digital repo turnover) and projects a $16 trn digital‑asset market in 15 years. The authors identify two key constraints to broader adoption: limited scale (most projects involve fewer than six participants) and lack of industry‑wide standardisation and interoperability. They propose that FMIs, as trusted, neutral, regulated entities, can address these constraints by providing operational resilience, production‑scale capacity, common standards (for DLT network eligibility, access controls, data‑privacy, and smart‑contract lifecycles) and interoperability between legacy and DLT systems. The paper concludes with a call for collaborative standard‑setting, open market feedback, and coordinated effort to unlock liquidity, reduce costs, and embed digital assets into the core post‑trade ecosystem.
Topics
FMIs' Historical Role as Trusted, Resilient Market Backbone
Describes how FMIs have enabled the dematerialisation of securities since the 1970s, providing scalable, regulated infrastructure that underpins global capital markets.