The latest episode of Chainlink’s “The Future Is On” spotlight series features the CEO of Marketnode, Rehan Ahmed, who shared insights on traditional finance’s approach to blockchain adoption, the most promising use cases for tokenization, and key infrastructure for supporting tokenized assets at scale.
Marketnode is a Singapore-based digital market infrastructure for credit, funds, and structured products, whose shareholders include Euroclear, HSBC, SGX Group, and Temasek. With global equity markets and fund AUM respectively valued around $130 trillion and $140 trillion, Ahmed believes onchain assets have “a lot of room to grow.”
“I think we’re still quite early in the usage of blockchain in asset management,” he said.
“We are very focused on the efficiency today. We have to get the format for these assets right first and put together the right rails so we can open up access for more assets onchain.”
He described two main approaches to tokenization in traditional capital markets: opening highly illiquid private assets to new distribution channels and introducing efficiencies to capital pool margins.
One of the key advantages of onchain financial products is significantly faster settlement cycles.
“When you target loans as an asset class, that’s typically T+45 – bringing that down using the technology to T+10 brings a lot of incremental benefits,” Ahmed explained.
“We like to build efficiencies at the margin and then go after scale, which means loans, funds, and structured products, to us today, are the key beneficiaries.”
Looking toward the future of finance, he envisions a world where there is flexibility between traditional and digital assets.
“I don’t think the answer is going to be as simple as either/or – you could work with one, you could work with the other, you could actually work with a combination,” he said. “I’m very pragmatic about how they’re going to coexist with each other.”
His most significant insight is that a new technology’s success correlates to its compatibility with other emerging technologies – and blockchain is no exception.
“How do we work with AI? How do we work with large learning models to actually speed up the velocity of transactions? That is what we have to keep attuned to.”
Watch the full episode of “The Future Is On” featuring Marketnode’s Rehan Ahmed.