Just hours before this issue went to press, I received two separate press releases from the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the privately owned post-trade services group.
The releases went to the heart of two of the most important features in this issue. The first detailed the latest update (4.0 Version 11) of its Central Trade Matching platform, the product created by Omgeo that is detailed in the ‘Death of the GSTPA’ article on page 28 – a history lesson on the industry’s attempt 20 years ago to standardise processes.
The second release unveiled the DTCC’s proposals on digitilisation in private markets – a subject covered in our cover feature on tokenisation – which has the intriguing title of Project Whitney. The DTCC’s interest is in whether security tokens can deliver a market with greater post-trade efficiency and, presumably, one that still has the DTCC in it.
While a story about experiments with security tokens might seem more topical than the 11th version of the fourth release of a product that is almost 20 years old, the GSTPA/Omgeo story reminds us just how long it takes to make changes in this market and suggests we set our expectations for tokenisation accordingly.
Nicholas Pratt, Technology & Operations Editor
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