The road ahead

The next 18 months promises continued development in the tokenised asset market. DTCC plans to launch its tokenisation service for DTC-custodied securities in October 2026, after live production trades in July. The ECB's Pontes, live since September 2026, will extend its hours and features in stages through 2028. In the UK, findings from the Bank of England’s Synchronisation Lab will shape its 2028 synchronisation service, and the first firms have been cleared for live activity in the Digital Securities Sandbox.

On the cash side, the US GENIUS Act takes effect by January 2027 and the UK stablecoin regime in October 2027, setting the terms on which regulated stablecoins can serve as a settlement asset for tokenised trades. If The Clearing House's shared tokenised deposit network launches as targeted in the first half of 2027, the largest US banks will have a common on-chain cash leg that reaches beyond any single institution.

Other questions are less settled. The failure of the CLARITY Act in the Senate leaves the US classification of digital assets unresolved. Bank capital treatment of public blockchains is also diverging: the global Basel standard still treats tokenised assets and stablecoins on them punitively, pending an expedited review, while US and UK regulators now broadly treat tokenised securities like their traditional equivalents. Reform of the EU's DLT Pilot Regime, proposed in December 2025, is still working through the legislative process.

Industry forecasts of $2 trillion (at the low end) by 2030 imply growth of around 20 times from today's base. Realising these forecasts will depend less on product innovation than on achieving interoperability, establishing common data standards and developing settlement assets that institutions can use at scale.