Miami Beach, FL – Tokenization won’t replace the system overnight, but is steadily reshaping the underlying pipes, Wall Street executives said at Consensus 2026 in Miami.
Digital asset leaders from Citi, JPMorgan and DTCC said during a panel discussion that blockchain-based rails will enter production, with real volumes and real customers determining how the technology is deployed.
A year ago, Citi’s tokenized deposit system processed millions. “Now we’re moving billions,” said Ryan Rugg, head of digital assets for the bank’s Treasury and Trade Solutions division.
According to her, the demand comes from customers who want to transfer money 24 hours a day, and not just during banking hours.
JPMorgan sees 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 building blockchain rails into existing infrastructure to enable faster settlement and continuous operations, she said.
DTCC, which is central to the American plumbing market, takes a longer-term view. The company is working to bring parts of its $150 trillion securities infrastructure onto a shared digital layer, with initial rollout plans already underway.
“You can’t just replace what exists,” says Nadine Chakar, head of digital assets at DTCC. “This is an evolution.”
This approach reflects a broader shift in the market. Early tokenization efforts often looked for problems to solve. Now companies are focusing on specific pain points, especially in areas such as collateral, cross-border payments and liquidity management.
For large companies, the ability to move money in real time – across time zones and holidays – changes the way treasury functions work. Instead of pre-positioning money days in advance, companies can respond immediately to margin calls or investment opportunities.
Still, the panelists returned to the idea that blockchain will eliminate middlemen altogether. 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 mediation,” 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, with blockchain gradually proving its effectiveness before a larger structural change takes place.
“The nature of blockchain is that it is transformative,” Auyang said, pointing to faster processes such as loan approvals that can shrink from weeks to days. But he added that fully native onchain markets are “not ready yet,” given the size of existing systems and regulatory limitations.
At the same time, he argued, the direction is difficult to ignore. “If there is efficiency and cost savings, this will be adopted,” he said, adding that traditional finance and decentralized systems are now “moving towards each other”.