Behind the Curtain: The Conversations Actually Shaping Tokenised Finance

There are events that generate press reeases. And then there are the conversations that actually move markets forward, held away from the noise, where the people building real infrastructure say what they genuinely think.

The recent Edwin Coe LLP digital assets roundtable was the latter.

Convened alongside Unblocked and moderated by Digital Bytes, the session brought together senior representatives from the London Stock Exchange Group, S&P Global, Ownera and Swarm. Not a panel show. A genuine exchange among people doing this work in real time. Here is a distillation of what was in the room.

The question has changed

The room agreed on something important: tokenisation has left the experimental phase. It is no longer being tested in isolated pilots or evaluated as a future possibility. It is increasingly part of the operational infrastructure of modern finance.

Tokenised US Treasuries and money market funds have surpassed $10 billion in market capitalisation. Crypto-native firms, including Circle Internet Group, have moved ahead of traditional incumbents in specific pockets of on-chain Treasury issuance. The competitive advantage in finance, the group observed, is no longer solely about balance sheet strength. It is increasingly about distribution, programmability and user experience.

The question has evolved. It is no longer whether tokenisation will reshape markets. It is who will control the infrastructure underpinning tokenised finance when it does.

Where the traction actually is

The clearest early wins are operational, not speculative. Collateral mobility, intraday liquidity management and tokenised money market funds are delivering measurable efficiency gains for institutions. Corporate treasury management is emerging as a practical use case, particularly for cross-border cash management where stablecoins and tokenised funds reduce friction.

This matters because it reframes the opportunity for early-stage founders. The value is not in creating digital versions of existing products. It is in solving the infrastructure problems that sit underneath them.

The cash layer question

One of the more nuanced discussions centred on the competing forms of digital money emerging in parallel. CBDCs, tokenised bank deposits and stablecoins are not converging on a single winner. They are coexisting, each suited to different use cases and contexts.

Stablecoins are currently achieving the fastest adoption, driven by their programmability and interoperability across digital asset markets. Tokenised deposits may come to dominate within closed banking ecosystems. CBDCs bring institutional trust and wholesale settlement utility. What is emerging is a layered architecture for digital money, one that is more complex and more interesting than the either/or debates that tend to dominate coverage.

The structural blockers remain real

The panel was clear-eyed about what is still in the way. Interoperability between platforms and systems, legal certainty across jurisdictions, settlement infrastructure and data standards remain the most significant barriers to scale. The debate between permissioned and permissionless market structures is unresolved, with different jurisdictions and institutions taking divergent approaches.

Digital identity, trust frameworks and operational resilience were also flagged as foundational requirements the market has not yet fully solved. As atomic settlement and real-time asset transfers become more common, the importance of robust identity infrastructure will only grow.

The UK's window

The conversation noted that the UK is moving from intent to implementation. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, now law, is a meaningful signal. The anticipated cryptoasset regulatory framework, expected to take shape over the coming months, is another.

Regulatory clarity is increasingly the primary factor attracting capital and institutional infrastructure to a jurisdiction. The UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland have moved faster. The UK has the foundations. The question is whether it converts them into speed.

A word on Edwin Coe

Edwin Coe LLP is not the largest name in legal services. It is, however, one of the most consistently active in creating the spaces where conversations like this actually happen and I know this from experience because I have sat in on a number of them.

Their Digital Assets and Tech team has been convening practitioners, technologists and builders around digital finance well before it became a mainstream priority for the profession. As a mid-sized firm operating at the frontier rather than watching from a distance, they have built a quiet reputation for practical, commercially grounded advice in an area where many larger firms are still finding their footing.

For founders navigating this space, the most useful legal counsel is often not the biggest name. It is the one already operating inside the conversations that matter.

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This post draws on the published roundtable recap from Edwin Coe LLP, republished with kind permission. Synthesis and editorial framing by TokenisingStartups.