How Institutions Actually Access Tokenised Assets — Key Takeaways 🧵

After listening to Fabian Dori (Sygnum), Julian Sawyer (Zodia Custody), Matthew Felice Pace (Spectrum Nodes) and Moritz Platt (Google), one message became crystal clear:
Institutions don’t have a technology problem. They have a trust, governance and compliance problem.
A few hard truths from the discussion:
• Custody is not optional. If banks are going to move into crypto at scale, regulated custody is the foundation.
• Running infrastructure across multiple chains is complex, but infrastructure is not the main bottleneck anymore.
• The real friction is risk management, governance and compliance.
• Banks are not interested in 12-decimal-place crypto systems. They need systems that connect to existing financial processes and controls.
• KYC isn’t a feature. It’s the foundation. Institutions want known identities, known counterparties and clear accountability.
• Permissionless systems may win in the long run, but today’s institutional demand is overwhelmingly for permissioned environments.
• Privacy matters. Financial institutions do not want sensitive transaction data exposed on public ledgers.
• Stablecoins are rapidly becoming a core banking topic rather than a crypto niche.
• Instant settlement sounds great, but institutions still need assurances that assets, cash and counterparties can be trusted.
• Governance is everything. Technology without governance will never reach institutional scale.
One quote that captured the entire panel:
“Don’t die on a hill: not the crypto hill nor the stablecoin hill.” - The winning horse is still running.
The winners won’t be those building the most sophisticated blockchain.
The winners will be those solving trust, compliance, governance and operational risk while delivering the benefits of tokenisation.
The future is not TradFi versus crypto.
The future is regulated financial infrastructure gradually becoming tokenised.