ISSA Working Groups on DLT and Evolving Technologies have been at the forefront of the digital asset journey to help the Securities Services industry understand the latest trends, the evolution to expect in the future and to make sense of the practical considerations and challenges. ISSA’s aim is to shine a forward looking light on DLT through our thought leadership.

With this spirit, we partnered with the ValueExchange six years ago to create an industry survey to track the real-world evolution of DLT and digital assets from a market perspective. We are very excited to therefore be publishing the sixth of the ‘DLT In the Real-World Longitudinal Study’ series. The results here drive the DLT discussion in the Securities Services industry. This exciting new report brings even deeper insights than before and participation beyond the traditional banks and infrastructures in our industry.

This year’s report has some important findings about current DLT usage and trends going forward. Usage continues to grow, the importance of DLT to firms remains high but interestingly, the key drivers are now New Product Revenues and Learning and Development.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding is that intraday liquidity will be the key driver of future projects. Whereas in the past, reducing expenses to drive P&L performance was paramount, now it seems to be more about the Balance Sheet - - capital efficiency and asset optimization. Pledging may well develop into the Digital Asset sweet spot as the data in this report predicts.

Tokenizing assets is now being seen as key to vastly expand collateral mobility to generate cash liquidity across the globe. Such pledging vs. payment transactions, in digital assets and digital currencies, may evolve to occur on a 24x7 basis, even during times that the payment system and central bank for the underlying currency and the CSD for the underlying asset are closed. To deliver on this opportunity, it is critical to tie together fragmented pools of assets that can serve as collateral all around the globe and to achieve scale in digital currencies. The survey results show that industry is no longer waiting for CBDCs. It is moving on other alternatives in advance of CBDC reality, adoption and critical mass usage, leading to the maturing of Stablecoins (aided by recent legislation), and the rise of other tokenized payment systems.

ISSA is following this trend, and the Evolving Technologies Working Group is focusing on Collateral Use Cases for DLT and will soon turn its attention to Stablecoins as well a Tokenized Funds which many buy-side firms are exploring as a way of extending their customer base into the crypto community.

We would like to thank the huge number of people and firms who participated in this report and provided their valuable input as well as our 2025 survey sponsors - Accenture, Broadridge and Taurus. We hope this report will not only be insightful to you but also help you benchmark your organization's DLT, and digital asset journey compared to the industry’s trajectory. As we continue to move forward the Working Group’s agenda, we look forward to working with you to use the insights from this report to drive further thought leadership and industry engagement.