The Digital Assets Summit brought together industry and regulatory voices, including Reed Smith Partner Brett Hills, Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul, JPMorgan’s Alexandra Prager and OpenEden’s Jeremy Ng, to discuss how digital-asset markets are evolving from isolated pilots into globally integrated financial systems.

Regulatory Clarity as a Catalyst

Sandy identified three forces shaping today’s more optimistic landscape: a change in US administration creating room for innovation; the arrival of the GENIUS Act and MiCA, providing long-awaited legal certainty; and a cultural shift in which crypto is viewed less as speculative and more as an accepted exposure class.

"We’re moving from an accounts world to a wallet-based world,” she observed, predicting that potentially within 18 months issuers will launch equities and securities directly on-chain.

Brett agreed that regulatory conditions are improving. In the UK and EU, he explained, existing regimes already accommodate tokenisation where firms are authorised for comparable activities. “The challenge comes when you innovate outside the perimeter, that’s when regulatory navigation becomes complex.” The forthcoming UK fund tokenisation paper is expected to further define a neutral and straightforward path for compliant innovation.

Institutional Architecture Emerging

Alexandra emphasised that adoption will depend on the creation of identity and privacy frameworks robust enough for institutional use. Drawing on JPMorgan’s Project Guardian and Project Epic, she highlighted how verifiable credentials and permissioned blockchain infrastructure are enabling privacy-preserving portfolio management and secondary trading.

Jeremy, from OpenEden, described how properly licensed, bankruptcy-remote structures are critical to investor protection, contrasting these with legacy note issuances that lacked such safeguards.

Bridging Traditional and Digital Markets

For Sandy, Franklin Templeton’s experience tokenising a money-market fund demonstrated that on-chain record-keeping can eliminate layers of operational risk while enabling intraday yield distribution functionality impossible in traditional systems. JPMorgan, meanwhile, continues to explore tokenised FX and commodities, prioritising client readiness and interoperability over technical novelty.

Risks and Roadblocks

Despite enthusiasm, speakers cited persistent obstacles:

• Legacy infrastructure that resists integration.
• Investor education gaps, as retail and institutional buyers race into RWA products without fully understanding their risk profiles.
• Regulatory knowledge gaps, which can lead to over or under-regulation and potential market failure.

The Road Ahead

Over the next five years, panellists foresee the widespread introduction of digital wallets across financial systems, the convergence of crypto-native and traditional markets, and the marginalisation of intermediaries as smart contract automation scales. Brett expects innovative products, including commodities and exotic assets, to drive the next wave of innovation.

The tone across the session was pragmatic: optimism tempered by an awareness that trust, compliance, and interoperability must evolve alongside technology.

Key Takeaway:

As tokenisation matures, the competitive edge will lie with firms that treat regulation and investor trust not as constraints but as infrastructure for innovation. Those who align with tech-neutral rules, privacy-first design, and transparent structuring will be best placed to participate in the institutionalisation of digital assets.