Miami Beach, FL — Tokenization doesn’t replace the system overnight, but it gradually reshapes the plumbing underneath, Wall Street executives said at Consensus 2026 in Miami.
Digital assets executives from Citi, JPMorgan and DTCC said during a panel discussion that blockchain-based rails are entering production, with real volumes and real customers determining how the technology is deployed.
A year ago, Citi’s token deposit system managed millions. “Now we’re moving billions,” said Ryan Rugg, head of digital assets for the bank’s treasury and business solutions unit.
The demand, she explained, comes from customers who want to transfer money 24 hours a day, not just during bank opening hours.
JPMorgan is seeing a similar trend. Its blockchain platform, Kinexys, has processed more than $1 trillion in transactions, said Kara Kennedy, head of market development for the bank’s digital assets unit.
The focus is less on building parallel systems and more on integrating blockchain rails into existing infrastructure to enable faster settlement and seamless operations, she said.
DTCC, which is at the center of the U.S. plumbing market, takes a longer-term view. The company is working to consolidate part of its $150 trillion securities infrastructure onto a shared digital layer, with initial deployment plans already underway.
“You can’t just replace what’s there,” said Nadine Chakar, head of digital assets at DTCC. “It’s an evolution.”
This approach reflects a broader shift in the market. Early tokenization efforts were often looking for problems to solve. Now, companies are targeting specific issues, particularly in areas such as collateral, cross-border payments and liquidity management.
For large businesses, the ability to move funds in real time (across time zones and holidays) changes how treasury functions work. Instead of prepositioning cash days in advance, companies can respond instantly to margin calls or investment opportunities.
Still, panelists pushed back against the idea that blockchain would cut out middlemen altogether. Critical 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 see a longer arc, however. Evan Auyang, president of Animoca Brands, said the industry is still in a transition phase, with blockchain gradually proving its effectiveness ahead of larger structural change.
“The nature of blockchain is that it is transformative,” Auyang said, pointing to faster processes like loan approval that can go from weeks to days. But he added that fully native onchain 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 this orientation. “If there are efficiencies and cost savings, it will be adopted,” he said, adding that traditional finance and decentralized systems are “converging.”
