Miami Beach, FL – Tokenization is not replacing the system overnight, but it is constantly reshaping the underlying plumbing, Wall Street executives said at Consensus 2026 in Miami.
Digital asset leaders from Citi, JPMorgan and DTCC said during a roundtable that blockchain-based rails are entering production, with real volumes and real customers shaping how the technology is deployed.
A year ago, Citi’s tokenized deposit system was handling millions. “We’re moving billions now,” said Ryan Rugg, who heads digital assets for the bank’s treasury and trading solutions unit.
The demand, he said, comes from customers who want to move money 24 hours a day, not just during banking hours.
JPMorgan is seeing a similar pattern. Its blockchain platform, Kinexys, has processed more than $1 trillion in transactions, said Kara Kennedy, who leads market development for the bank’s digital assets unit.
The focus is less on building parallel systems and more on attaching blockchain rails to existing infrastructure to enable faster settlement and continuous operations, he said.
DTCC, which is at the center of the U.S. plumbing market, is taking a longer-term view. The company is working to bring parts of its $150 trillion securities infrastructure to a shared digital layer, and initial implementation plans are already underway.
“You can’t just replace what exists,” said Nadine Chakar, head of digital assets at DTCC. “This is an evolution.”
That approach reflects a broader shift in the market. Early tokenization efforts often looked for problems to solve. Now, companies are targeting specific pain points, especially in areas such as collateral, cross-border payments and liquidity management.
For large corporations, the ability to move funds in real time (across time zones and holidays) is changing the way treasury functions operate. Instead of prepositioning cash days in advance, companies can react instantly to margin calls or investment opportunities.
Still, the panelists rejected the idea that blockchain will eliminate middlemen entirely. Core functions such as risk management, compliance, and settlement guarantees remain difficult to replicate in fully decentralized systems.
“We will always need some level of intermediation,” Chakar said.
Crypto-native players, however, see a longer arc. Evan Auyang, president of Animoca Brands, said the industry is still in a transition phase, and that blockchain is gradually proving its efficiency before a major structural change.
“The nature of blockchain is transformative,” Auyang said, pointing to faster processes, such as loan approvals, that can be reduced from weeks to days. But he added that fully native on-chain markets are “not ready yet,” given the scale of existing systems and regulatory constraints.
At the same time, he argued, it is difficult to ignore the direction. “If there is efficiency and cost savings, it will be adopted,” he said, adding that traditional finance and decentralized systems are now “converging.”
