DTCC is acquiring blockchain firm Securrency. The startup is best known for its Compliance Aware Token framework, where security tokens are aware of local regulations. Last year former senior State Street executive Nadine Chakar became CEO of Securrency. She will now lead DTCC Digital Assets and join the DTCC Management Committee. DTCC processes more than $2 quadrillion in capital markets transactions annually.
Securrency raised almost $50 million in funding. Backers included State Street, U.S. Bank and WisdomTree.
“Securrency is an important strategic acquisition that will give us the technology to drive market-wide transformation by enabling end-to-end digital lifecycle processing for tokenized assets, digital currencies and other financial instruments,” said Frank La Salla, President, CEO and Director, DTCC.
“We believe this next generation of financial market infrastructure will further reduce settlement times, facilitate market transparency and risk management, enhance regulatory oversight and controls, and unlock efficiency and innovation to create an improved investor experience.”
The DTCC plans to enable institutional DeFi and embed digital assets within its existing products. It will also explore use cases with asset managers, broker dealers and custodians. Securrency’s technology will be offered under license as it is currently. For example, WisdomTree Prime, the asset manager’s digital assets offering uses Securrency technology.
Tackling tokenization fragmentation
One of the current challenges of the institutional adoption of blockchain is fragmentation. The DTCC wants to provide global leadership in this area and believes Securrency’s technology can provide a “DLT-agnostic harmonization layer”.
“We look forward to building on our past work to drive consensus around the standards, controls and frameworks necessary to support regulatory-compliant digital asset solutions and development of the right architecture and infrastructure to ensure widespread interoperability,” said La Salla.
This echoes a joint call last month by the DTCC, Clearstream and Euroclear to create standards and pool liquidity.
The DTCC has already been very active in blockchain initiatives. For example, Project Ion is a DLT stock settlement platform that is in production. It also deployed a DLT solution for derivatives.
