Where Finance Finds Its Future

Funds have emerged as the main axis of advance for tokenisation. Tokenised money market funds, used first by on-chain cryptocurrency traders, have found a second audience in traditional collateral management. Their close cousin, Stablecoins, are also migrating from the cryptocurrency markets to facilitate instant settlement of fund transactions and round-the-clock trading of tokenised funds. The question is no longer whether tokenised funds offer value to asset managers and allocators, fund distributors and bank and brokerage intermediaries. It is whether they can scale. One school holds that the key to scale is greater interoperability between traditional and digital asset markets. While a preference for digital twins of established funds will always disappoint purists, it does allow asset managers to gather more assets by reaching new classes of investor. Widening distribution also argues for public rather than private blockchains. And no fund servicing business is doing more to enable its customers to issue, distribute and service tokenised funds and asset-backed Stablecoins than Apex Group. Dominic Hobson, Co-founder of Future of Finance, asked Peter Hughes, CEO and founder of Apex Group, why he has placed tokenisation at the forefront of his strategy.

Every token issuer knows that scale depends on liquidity, but liquidity depends on scale. To break this cycle, Bermuda-based MembersCap, the specialist reinsurance investment manager, is making available composable versions of its tokenised funds. The firm is confident composability will extend the range of allocators open to investing in MembersCap funds beyond traditional end-investors such as foundations and pension funds to encompass the corporate treasurers, hedge funds, market makers, arbitrageurs, proprietary traders and yield farmers active in the Decentralised Finance (DeFi) markets. The challenge is that the 24/7 trading models characteristic of DeFi demand instant liquidity. MembersCap meets the challenge through an innovative custodial structure. Which means the funds get a liquidity boost as well as wider distribution. Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, asked Bruce Jackson, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Capital Officer at MembersCap, how it all works.⭐ Read more about this interview: MembersCap is repackaging its tokenised funds to meet the needs of DeFi tradersLearn more and connect with Future of Finance:🌐 https://www.futureoffinance.biz/[in] https://www.linkedin.com/company/future-of-finance-fof

The balance between tokenised money market funds and tokenised money will shift. Public blockchains will continue to grow at the expense of private ones, but which protocols prove popular remains unpredictable. The infrastructure for the tokenised markets of the future is being built. Tokenised funds will be overtaken by tokenised securities. The transition from the intermediated markets of the past to the un-intermediated markets of the future is messy but gathering momentum. Jeff Hartjes, executive business manager at 21x, the regulated, blockchain-based digital asset exchange, spoke about these and other issues with Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance.⭐ Read more about this interview: https://www.futureoffinance.biz/expect-more-game-changers-in-2026-says-digital-asset-exchange-21xLearn more and connect with Future of Finance:🌐 https://www.futureoffinance.biz/[in] https://www.linkedin.com/company/future-of-finance-fof

Emmanuel Daniel, founder of the TAB Global research house, thinks about the effects of digital technology on finance and how the changes it makes possible will impact business and society. In The Great Transition – the personalisation of finance is here, published in September 2022, he predicted that blockchain technology would shift Internet finance from centralised, market-based platforms to a distributed, networked, personalised and democratised model. Today, he is concerned that the future he foresaw is being hijacked by the traditional financial services industry. Future of Finance co-founder Dominic Hobson spoke to Emmanuel Daniel about what went wrong and how it can be put right.

Future of Finance Interviews Richard Brown, Chief Executive of R3 LabsThe pivot by R3 from private to public blockchains through its partnership with Solana might be one of those apparently arcane technical deals - like IBM and Microsoft or Apple and ARM - that changes everything. It allies regulated, institutional money with an open blockchain protocol that can compete with existing equity and debt marketplaces on volume, speed and price, while still delivering on the central promise of blockchain: elimination of high levels of financial intermediation. It could, by accelerating the tokenisation of traditional financial assets as well as traditional forms of money, achieve what Ethereum has so far failed to deliver. Future of Finance Co-founder Dominic Hobson asked Richard Brown, Chief Executive of R3 Labs, why the company has set such a radical new course.

Explore the paradox of using artificial intelligence (AI) to make better people decisions than managers can do on their own.What is the event about?Many corporations, especially in financial services, attribute much of their success to the quality of their talent, which might suggest that they would also credit the HR function with helping them to acquire, develop, motivate, and retain said talent. However, managers and employees instead often complain that HR is a large, growing and not particularly helpful function that creates policies and processes that interfere with corporations’ ability to effectively manage their talent. Whether justified or not, many managers fault HR for not adequately or appropriately leveraging technological advances for the benefit of both employees, managers, and shareholders. This event will explore how recent advances in AI can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the HR function, reducing the resources it requires while also transforming the speed and quality of services it delivers.Who is on the panel?Todd Gershkowitz - Co-CEO at PaystandardsAnthony Poole - Partner, Human Capital at AONPavi Singh - Partner, UK & Ireland Leader HR and Talent Transformation Consulting at IBMEric Weinberg - VP Head of Executive and Equity Compensation at Prudential FinancialModerated by Dominic Hobson Co-Founder and Editorial Director at Future of Finance

A Future of Finance interview with Alexandre Kech, CEO of GLEIF.There are two main obstacles to the scaling of the markets in digital assets and one of them is the lack of interoperability between blockchain networks and between blockchain networks and traditional financial markets. The default answer, hallowed by history in multiple industries, is standards. By enabling different networks to exchange data, they multiply the overall volume of counterparties and transactions. Unfortunately, attempts to achieve interoperability standards in digital assets suffer from limited usage and winner-takes-all proprietorial schemes, condemning most market participants to deploy risky or clumsy workarounds. So it is significant that the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), set up by the Financial Stability Board in 2014 to overcome a major accelerant of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009 – namely, the lack of a trusted counterparty identification standard on a global scale – has broadened its work to encompass digital assets. Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, spoke to Alex Kech, CEO of GLEIF.

A Future of Finance interview with Thorsten Peisl, Founder and Chief Executive at KALYP Technologies. In 2026 Kalyp Technologies celebrates the tenth anniversary of its foundation as a provider of blockchain infrastructure to the regulated capital markets. It is an ambition that has required patience as well as more obvious resources, since securing the regulatory endorsement on which institutional engagement depends is a lengthy process. But now the company has built an open financial market infrastructure of its own, the Digital Securities Depositary Corporation (DSDC), and is embarked on its first major initiative - making American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) available as Digital Depositary Receipts (DDRs). Future of Finance co-founder Dominic Hobson spoke to Thorsten Peisl, Founder and Chief Executive of Kalyp Technologies.