Tokenization won't disrupt banking rails but improve them, Wall Street executives say

Miami Beach, FL — Tokenization is not replacing the system overnight, but it is steadily reshaping the plumbing underneath, 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 are moving into production, with real volumes and real clients shaping how the technology is deployed.

A year ago, Citi's tokenized deposit system was handling millions. "Now we’re moving billions," said Ryan Rugg, who leads digital assets for the bank’s treasury and trade solutions unit.

The demand, she said, is coming from clients who want to move money around the clock, not just during banking hours.

JPMorgan is seeing 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 stitching blockchain rails into existing infrastructure to enable faster settlement and continuous operations, she said.

DTCC, which sits at the center of U.S. market plumbing, is taking a longer view. The firm 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," said Nadine Chakar, who heads digital assets at DTCC. "This is an evolution."

That approach reflects a broader shift in the market. Early tokenization efforts often looked for problems to solve. Now, firms are targeting specific pain points, especially in areas such as collateral, cross-border payments, and liquidity management.

For large corporations, the ability to move funds in real time — across time zones and holidays — is changing how treasury functions operate. Instead of pre-positioning cash days in advance, firms can react instantly to margin calls or investment opportunities.

Still, the panelists pushed back on the idea that blockchain will remove intermediaries altogether. Core functions like risk management, compliance and settlement guarantees remain hard to replicate in fully decentralized systems.

"We will always need some level of intermediation," Chakar said.

Crypto-native players, however, see a longer arc. Evan Auyang, president at Animoca Brands, said the industry is still in a transition phase, with blockchain gradually proving its efficiency before a bigger structural change.

"The nature of blockchain is that it’s transformative," Auyang said, pointing to faster processes like loan approvals that can shrink 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, the direction is hard to ignore. "If there’s efficiency and cost savings, it will be adopted," he said, adding that traditional finance and decentralized systems are now "converging."