The industry-driven standards body, the FIX Trading Community (‘FIX’), announces the objectives of its Digital Assets & Technology Committee.

With the rapid ascent of digital assets as a distinct asset class continuing to gather pace, the Digital Assets & Technology Committee will be focusing its efforts over the coming year on:

• Integration and interoperability: Identifying the implications of interoperability between competing digital asset-focused technologies, as well as between digital asset-focused technologies and the traditional financial space.
• Regulatory guidance Providing advice to help industry participants navigate the rapidly-changing regulatory environment and explore how standards can ease any implementation burden.
• Efficient use of DLT and smart contracts: Supporting the industry with the development of common workflow design to efficiently use DLT and smart contracts in an effort to solve existing trade processing workflow issues.

Goncalo Lima, Co-Chair of FIX’s Digital Assets & Technology Committee and Capital Markets Strategy Lead at R3, a DLT provider, said: “Integration and interoperability are critical for asset tokenisation to scale up. Establishing a set of standards, such as the ones developed by FIX, will play a vital role in lowering barriers to adoption, facilitating innovation and ensuring the secure exchange of data and value across the ever-evolving capital markets landscape.

“We invite community members to join us as we look to determine how best to harness the power of these new technologies for the greater good of the industry.”

Vince Turcotte, Co-Chair of FIX’s Digital Assets & Technology Committee, said: “Smart contracts, enhanced with the FIX protocol, will facilitate the settlement of both digital and traditional assets in a distributed ledger ecosystem. This is due to their programmable and interoperable nature as well as their ability to automate processes.

“We are entering a new era, marked by the emergence of new asset classes enriching traditional ones. We see a bright future ahead of us, with new and improved efficiencies and greater transparency across the financial services sector, benefiting all participants.”

Source: FIX