Australian Securities Exchange Eyes Blockchain-Based Tokenized Assets

On Tuesday, August 16, 2022, the trial program by Zerocap to showcase Synfini’s ability to support tokenized assets was officially a success.

ASX’s Tokenization Push 

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) worked with the private wealth management firm, Zerocap, in a blockchain tokenization trial, reports show. The trial was set to establish Synfini’s ability to support tokenized assets as Zerocap provides custody.

Launched in November 2021, Synfini is ASX’s distributed ledger technology (DLX) as a service that provides the platform connectivity services, software, and infrastructure that customers may need to build a DLT application.

This trial was put on to prove that ASX can provide a tokenization platform for not just securities but digital assets also. However, when talking about digital assets, cryptocurrency is not the focus.

The CEO of Zerocap, Ryan McCall, shared that the focus is not on bitcoin (BTC), but on anything that needs liquidity to settle and anything that has a trade cycle of days. He shares, “We’re talking about the tokenization of anything, of bonds, property, and carbon credits.”

As part of its service, Synfini enables organizations to launch their own blockchain solutions. It offers the technology that underpins the DAML smart contract language, its Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS), and VMware Blockchain.

Zerocap, which was recently involved in the pilot of ANZ’s stablecoin, integrated its custody business onto Synfini, building a trading, clearing, and settlement app. This was demonstrated to investors with the goal of showing what is possible on the platform.

The Adoption of Tokenization

ASX has been in the news for many strides in the crypto space. From its development of CHESS and Synfini to Betashares’ launch of Australia’s first metaverse-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF), it has consistently shot for the stars. It is, however, not the first to diversify into tokenization.

From the turn of Indie artists to tokenization, the exploration of tokenization in the insurance industry, the launch of real estate tokenization, and the tokenization of contracts in sports to Russia where a proposal was made for the amendment of digital assets law to include tokenization platforms and we see tokenization evolve in the film industry, tokenization is an aspect in the emerging blockchain technology ecosystem which more and more institutions and industries are exploring.

Other stock exchanges, like the Swiss Exchange (SIX), are giving blockchain-based tokenization another glance and integrating the innovation into their operations.

The adoption of this trend in diverse industries, following the birth of asset tokenization in the blockchain industry, caused crypto.news to create a beginner’s guide on the subject.

The reason why more and more paths will be created into tokenization is evident in the benefits, which include but are not limited to faster transactions, transparency, and higher liquidity. It also helps that more and more industries are discovering ways they can adopt asset tokenization to suit the needs of the industry.

By focusing on “the tokenization of anything,” the proof of concept trial might explore areas not attempted before in the tokenization trend. This is a possibility that McCall agrees with. Speaking of the success of the trial, he reveals, “There’s a strong value proposition here that we can essentially tokenize any asset and bridge that into the ASX ecosystem.”