Digital Assets: Research Brief

Ahead of SIFMA’s 2026 Operations Conference & Exhibition, our Insights team examines how digital assets are reshaping core market functions, from trading through settlement, and what their growing adoption means for the future of capital markets.

Executive Summary

In this brief, we explore three major digital asset classes: cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, focusing on equities and bond funds.

While these categories are often discussed separately, their growth is increasingly interconnected. Cryptocurrencies provide both a decentralized store of value and the underlying infrastructure for digital asset ownership and transfer, stablecoins facilitate payments and liquidity, and tokenized assets bring traditional financial instruments onto blockchain-based systems. As these components continue to evolve and become even further integrated, a more unified, digitally native financial system is likely to result.