Maurice:

Welcome everyone, to another edition of C&F Talks. Today I have with me Stephan Dreyer, who's the Managing Director at ANNA, which is the Association of National Numbering Agencies. Stephan's going to be speaking at the Digital Asset Innovation Summit, which is being held on the 2nd of July, as part of City Week at the Royal Garden Hotel in London. Stephan, welcome.

Thank you for having me, pleasure to be here.

Really good to have you with us.

First, perhaps, for those who are not familiar with the organisation, Stephan, can you give us a quick 101 on what ANNA is and its purpose and its relationship to the digital asset space?

Yeah, with pleasure. So, the Association of National Numbering Agencies, or ANNA, is a global member association. We have 123 members globally, representing key market infrastructures, and together we are responsible for the promotion and the adoption and implementation of standards within the capital markets.

And as everyone is probably aware, we see the capital markets transforming very heavily through the application of blockchain and DLT technology, giving us things called digital assets and concepts of tokenisation. So, our work has grown to encompass the promotion of standards related to digital assets.

Okay.

And I guess that those standards are a prerequisite for institutional investor involvement in the market. So, to what extent do you think that they will ensure the scale, stability and regulatory confidence in the markets?

Well, we have good experience to go on. So, we have the ISIN standard, which has been functioning in traditional finance for the last 40 years. And we've done a lot of work to understand that that standard is also relevant and applicable for something that is issued on a DLT.

And we've moved it also into the new space of crypto, ensuring that you can take a crypto asset and identify it uniquely the same way that you can a traditional asset that is issued off chain. That gives organisations the opportunity to keep and leverage the same infrastructure.

And while with DLT and blockchain, you have new technology risks, that's where we have partnered with other standards organisations, such as the DTI Foundation, so Digital Token Identifier Foundation, which focuses on the identification standards at the token implementation level.

Yeah, absolutely. We know the DTI very well and that they're involved in the conference as well.

I mean, obviously, interoperability is a recurring challenge in today's fragmented tokenisation landscape. How is ANNA working to support more harmonised and efficient identification standards across digital and traditional assets?

Yeah, so it's a great question. That's very much the cusp of the work that we're doing. First and foremost, it's about education and awareness.

So, raising the awareness that these standards exist and how they can be leveraged for maximum benefit in developing this ecosystem in a harmonised way, similar to the way that has been done in traditional capital markets. So, we talked about expanding the scope of ISIN to digital assets and the work that we're doing there. Collaboration being another key pillar in that.

So, with organisations not only like the DTI Foundation, but with the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation and other organisations which are heavily involved in promoting the development of ecosystems for digital assets.

Maurice:

What's the relationship between the standards that you're offering and unlocking liquidity in the market? What are the sorts of technical governance innovations that are required to build more liquid and resilient markets for tokenised assets in particular?

Yes, the standards that we're responsible for that we work on with our partners. So, whether it's the LEI at the entity level, the ISIN at the asset level or the Digital Token Identifier at the token level, they're all ISO standards which have a very specific governance process within the ISO world. In terms of liquidity, it's really about building the bridges between the traditional and blockchain-based instruments through the collaboration aspects, legacy system integration and then working with obviously regulators to help identify the benefits so that those can be included in regulation for markets to comply with.

Maurice:

And in terms of looking forward, how do you see the evolution of digital asset identifiers such as ISINs and DTIs and other standards, how do you see them playing a role in bridging traditional finance and on-chain markets?

Well, I think we're going to be in a world that is traditional and digital both for some time. And organisations, whether they're on the buy side, the sell side or whether they're providing some service, there's going to be operations happening in both. And you're not going to develop systems which are completely disconnected from each other.

So, if I'm an investor, I'm going to hold government bonds, I'm going to hold tokenised government bonds, I'm going to have some money market funds, maybe some ETFs on Bitcoin and then maybe some direct investments in some stablecoins. And so having a system that takes identifiers such as ISIN and DTI and covers the full spectrum of assets and tokens that are included in there, integrating that with these legacy systems gives you that transparency and oversight. That's a lot of the foundation that we're working on.

And, you know, you have traditional assets which are not tokenised but investing in as their underlying some type of crypto, but you also have the tokenised asset with some type of underlying in some type of crypto as well or other tokenised asset. And so, you've got this convergence, you've got many things playing out. And we recognise that that's why the ISIN will continue to help with that identification and providing the economic kind of attributes of the asset and the DTI providing the technical information related to that asset and its tokenisation on different DLTs.

Maurice:

And I suppose the other aspects of looking forward, how do you see or what sorts of collaborations or global initiatives do you believe are essential to scaling tokenisation of digital assets in a way that is both interoperable and institutionally secure?

Well, obviously there's a lot of regulatory development happening. We've seen now a shift. I think we've had in Europe for some time some strong development in the regulatory space, Asia making a lot of strong moves forward and then a more recent shift on the US side.

But I would say that one of the key things is collaboration. So, events that bring together community to discuss what are the developments that are happening? What are the challenges? How can we work together? There's many different organisations whether directly involved in standards or helping to develop taxonomies which are leveraged by different identification standards schemes. And really, it's that joint effort.

Everybody deciding, okay, I'm going to focus on this. That's not going to bring us forward in any meaningful way. Certainly, with the need and the demand for acceleration that is being heavily sought at the moment.

I mean, it seems from all your answers cooperation, trying to knit the system together, making sure there isn't too many differences between approaches in different countries and on different platforms. That is really the task at hand for everybody, I think it is. And that's a debate that we'll take forward at the Digital Asset Innovation Summit.

Once again, for our viewers, that's being held on the 2nd of July in London at the Royal Garden Hotel. We’d love for you to join us in person. Further information is available at the website, City Week, well it's www.cityweekuk.com. So, very much hope you'll be able to join us there and then.

And Stephan, I shall certainly be seeing you there. So, thanks very much for your time today.

Absolutely, I look forward to it, thank you.