“We are inevitably in a converging world rather than a colliding world”

Institutional demand for digital assets is rising, and custody is emerging as a key enabler for scaling the market safely. At AFME Optic 2025, the session “Digital Assets Custody: The Keys to Growth” brought together experts from Ashurst, Fidelity Digital Assets, Clearstream, and Northern Trust to explore how digital asset custody is evolving, how it compares with traditional models, and which legal and regulatory challenges remain.

Etay Katz, Head of Digital Assets and Financial Innovation at Ashurst, highlighted the importance of legal and operational clarity. He said the market now needs harmonised frameworks for ownership, jurisdiction, and settlement to allow institutions to scale.

Excel- API- blockchain

Marina Baudéan from Fidelity Digital Assets explained how institutions are seeking integration rather than experimentation. “We moved from Excel to APIs, now we’re moving from APIs to blockchain technology,” she said. She described how Fidelity applies traditional standards of operational resilience, segregation, and governance to digital assets.

Moderating the discussion, Anna Matson, Senior Vice President for Digital Assets and Financial Markets at Northern Trust, observed that digital asset custody builds on the principles of traditional custody but introduces new technical complexities, particularly around interoperability.

Blockchain orchestrator

Roberto Petrarulo, Vice President for Digital Security Services at Clearstream, described how the firm is adapting its infrastructure for tokenised issuance. “We have introduced this logic at the beginning of the issuance, but then the distribution happens the same way,” he said, referring to Clearstream’s D7 platform. He added that Clearstream sees itself “in a position of blockchain orchestrator,” bridging legacy and digital processes.

Katz summed up the discussion by emphasising the direction of the market: “We are inevitably in a converging world rather than a colliding world.” Digital and traditional custody models are no longer separate; they are aligning toward a unified financial ecosystem.

The yearly Optic conference, in Amsterdam on 7–8 October 2025, is hosted by the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME). Optic stands for the “Operations, post trade, technology and innovation conference”. PostTrade 360° is there, with our coverage collected here.