Conference Day Session Themes

Real World Assets, Tokenisation, Stablecoins and Payments

Thursday, 12th March 2026 | King & Wood Mallesons

Tokenisation is accelerating a shift toward multi-rail market architecture in which financial products operate across a mix of public and private settlement infrastructure. Economic rights, eligibility criteria and governance frameworks remain tightly defined, while settlement, messaging and record-keeping increasingly leverage distributed systems. This separation challenges long-standing assumptions about vertically integrated market design.

Institutional adoption is being driven less by asset digitisation and more by the emergence of on-chain collateral, programmable liquidity and private credit infrastructure. Tokenised funds, treasuries and credit instruments function simultaneously as investment assets and settlement primitives, reshaping intraday liquidity management, collateral efficiency and treasury operations.

Capital formation is moving on-chain quietly through wholesale products, private markets and treasury strategies rather than retail issuance. Issuance, settlement and risk transfer increasingly occur across interoperable systems, creating new patterns of liquidity formation and market access that do not align neatly with traditional market boundaries.

Settlement assets are increasingly expected to function as both money and collateral. Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and fund-based cash instruments compete and coexist, with adoption determined by settlement finality, governance discipline, interoperability and operational credibility rather than technical design alone.

Theme

Wholesale Tokenisation and Institutional Deployment

Tokenisation at scale depends on legal recognition, governance discipline, settlement certainty and institutional acceptance.
Wholesale market use cases impose higher standards than retail experimentation, particularly around control, transparency and risk management. Institutional deployment highlights where tokenisation delivers genuine efficiency and where it introduces operational or legal complexity that must be addressed before scale is achievable.

Strategic Focus

  • Managing change inside financial institutions
  • TradFi to TokenFi migration paths
  • Institutional strategies for scaling tokenised assets
  • From innovation teams to balance sheets
  • Fiduciary obligations, governance discipline and internal risk ownership
  • Custody acceptance, control frameworks and trust layers
  • Clearing, settlement and trade automation for wholesale markets

Theme

Tokenisation Beyond Pilots

Early tokenisation initiatives demonstrated technical feasibility but often stalled before reaching production scale.

Legal certainty, record-of-truth recognition, auditability, lifecycle management and disclosure requirements have emerged as primary constraints. Market integrity expectations traditionally applied to financial instruments must translate effectively into tokenised environments for tokenisation to function as infrastructure rather than experimentation.

Strategic Focus

  • Beyond proof-of-concept institutional deployment
  • From pilot to portfolio: what actually changed
  • Why institutions kill their own pilots
  • Legal recognition and record-of-truth questions
  • Audit readiness, reporting and lifecycle management
  • Disclosure obligations and market integrity on-chain
  • Compliance automation versus manual oversight

Theme

Money for a Tokenised Economy

Tokenised assets require credible settlement assets to support liquidity, trust and scalability.

Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and existing forms of central bank and commercial bank money present different trade-offs in risk, interoperability and acceptance. Settlement design influences collateral efficiency, intraday liquidity and cross-border usability, shaping the practical limits of tokenised markets.

Strategic Focus

  • Stablecoins, tokenised deposits and digital money
  • Settlement finality and on-chain money
  • Payments, collateral and cash management
  • Capital efficiency and intraday liquidity
  • Cross-border settlement and interoperability
  • Bridging tokenised assets and money

Theme

Stablecoins and Payments Infrastructure

Stablecoins are increasingly assessed as payments and settlement infrastructure rather than trading instruments.

Global approaches to issuer regulation, reserve quality, redemption mechanics and systemic oversight are converging around stability and consumer protection. Integration with existing payments ecosystems, card networks and merchant acquiring is central to adoption. Concentration risk, sound money considerations and interoperability with regulated financial systems are driving policy and deployment decisions.

Strategic Focus

  • Next generation stablecoins
  • Stablecoin wars and lindy dynamics
  • Issuer regulation, reserves and redemption mechanics
  • Concentration risk and systemic oversight
  • Integration with existing payments systems
  • Interoperability with regulated financial infrastructure
  • Non-USD stablecoins and currency risk

Theme

Payments at the Centre of Digital Finance

Payments providers sit at the primary interface between digital assets and the real economy.

Transaction integrity, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, settlement timing and cross-border flows shape both consumer experience and regulatory confidence. Payments infrastructure functions as a key control point for trust, scalability and market resilience, influencing how digital finance integrates with everyday economic activity.

Strategic Focus

  • Payments as the distribution layer for digital assets
  • Transaction integrity, fraud prevention and dispute resolution
  • Settlement timing and liquidity management
  • Cross-border flows and regulatory confidence
  • Payments providers as institutional gatekeepers
  • Trust, scalability and resilience in digital finance

Theme

Tokenised Deposits and the Evolution of Bank Money

Tokenised deposits offer a bank-aligned approach to programmable money within established prudential frameworks.

Differences in governance, safeguarding and systemic treatment distinguish deposit-based models from stablecoins. Wholesale settlement, intraday liquidity management and interoperability with existing banking infrastructure define the conditions under which institutional and enterprise adoption becomes viable.

Strategic Focus

  • Tokenised deposits versus stablecoins
  • Bank-aligned programmable money
  • Governance, safeguarding and prudential treatment
  • Wholesale settlement use cases
  • Intraday liquidity management
  • Interoperability with existing banking infrastructure

Theme

Asset Tokenisation for Settlement

Settlement design is the credibility test for tokenisation.

Delivery-versus-payment structures, legal and operational finality and interoperability across platforms determine whether tokenised transactions can be trusted at scale. Operating parallel ledgers during transition introduces reconciliation risk and complexity. Trade-offs between speed and certainty shape both market confidence and regulatory acceptance.

Strategic Focus

  • Settlement as the credibility test
  • Delivery-versus-payment structures
  • Legal and operational finality
  • Interoperability across platforms
  • Parallel ledger risk and reconciliation
  • Speed versus certainty trade-offs

Theme

Real World Assets at Institutional Scale

Institutional capital imposes discipline on tokenisation through fiduciary obligations, governance requirements and liquidity expectations.

Valuation, exit mechanics, custody acceptance and insolvency outcomes determine whether tokenised real-world assets can be integrated into long-term portfolios. Settlement asset choice and risk allocation play a decisive role in institutional comfort and deployment.

Strategic Focus

  • Institutional use cases from experimentation to adoption
  • Valuation frameworks and exit mechanics
  • Custody acceptance and insolvency treatment
  • Liquidity expectations and secondary markets
  • Settlement asset choice and risk allocation
  • Portfolio integration and fiduciary constraints

Theme

Payments Rails and Deployability

Existing payments and settlement infrastructure must support tokenised value without compromising stability.

Infrastructure neutrality, competition, resilience and interoperability shape where adaptation is necessary and where continuity must be preserved. Productive innovation is distinguished from change that introduces avoidable systemic risk, with deployability judged against real-world operational and regulatory constraints.

Strategic Focus

  • Payments rails and settlement infrastructure
  • Infrastructure neutrality and competition
  • Systemic resilience and continuity
  • Interoperability and standards
  • Regulatory constraints on deployment
  • Distinguishing productive innovation from systemic risk

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