Digital Assets, Distributed Ledger Technology and the Future of Capital Markets

The report analyzes how distributed ledger technology (DLT) is transitioning from experimentation to commercialization across various capital market asset classes. It identifies significant operational inefficiencies in legacy systems—such as data siloes and manual reconciliation—that DLT can address through shared sources of truth and smart contracts. While several use cases are live in equity, debt, and derivatives markets, the report notes that large-scale transformation is hindered by regulatory uncertainty, the 'collaboration paradox' where firms fear value migration, and the complexity of running parallel legacy and digital infrastructures.

• DLT is moving from the experimentation phase to commercialization, with many use cases now live across various jurisdictions and asset classes, although total digital transformation at scale remains unrealized.
• Legacy capital market structures create substantial inefficiencies by requiring firms to maintain siloed records and perform manual reconciliations, which increases costs and limits balance sheet optimization.
• The 'collaboration paradox' describes a tension where DLT-enabled efficiency may shift value pools among participants, making firms reluctant to join collaborative initiatives despite the fact that ecosystem-wide value requires such cooperation.
• Significant barriers to DLT adoption include a lack of leadership buy-in for long-term business cases, the high cost of maintaining parallel legacy and new systems, and a fragmented global regulatory landscape.
• In equity markets, DLT is being applied to replatform post-trade infrastructure, supplement existing systems to reduce settlement risk, and create end-to-end platforms for digitally native securities.
• Debt markets are viewed as particularly suited for DLT due to their fragmented over-the-counter nature, with use cases focusing on digital bond issuance, distributed order books for trading, and retail bond distribution via tokenization.
• For securitized products, DLT's primary value lies in creating a single source of truth for underlying loan data, which reduces the need for repetitive audits across the value chain.
• In derivatives markets, DLT is used to manage the post-trade life cycle of OTC contracts and automate collateral pledging workflows to improve real-time visibility of margin requirements.
• Securities financing, specifically repurchase agreements (repos), is an area where DLT can enable intraday secured funding and better collateral mobility through tokenization and immobilization.
• Wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins are identified as critical enablement tools that could allow for atomic delivery versus payment (DvP) settlement in central bank money.

APA

World Economic Forum (2021). Digital Assets, Distributed Ledger Technology and the Future of Capital Markets. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digital_Assets_Distributed_Ledger_Technology_2021.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Digital Assets, Distributed Ledger Technology and the Future of Capital Markets. 2021. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digital_Assets_Distributed_Ledger_Technology_2021.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Digital Assets, Distributed Ledger Technology and the Future of Capital Markets |date=May 2021 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digital_Assets_Distributed_Ledger_Technology_2021.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2021digital, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Digital Assets, Distributed Ledger Technology and the Future of Capital Markets}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2021}, month = may, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Digital_Assets_Distributed_Ledger_Technology_2021.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }