Hello and welcome to 2024’s final edition of the State Street Digital Digest. This has been an important year for digital assets, with the financial services industry making major strides toward demonstrating that de-fi investments aren’t just for proofs-of-concept and sandboxes, but actually can become part of the mainstream investment ecosystem.
Not least among this year’s developments was our service agreement with tokenization services provider, Taurus, to offer smart contract generation and maintenance, blockchain management and, regulators permitting, digital asset custody.
In this edition of the Digest, we explore details of the Taurus partnership in a conversation with Vassili Lavrov, head of Product at Taurus, and Zahid Mustafa, head of Digital Asset Custody at State Street. Vassili and Zahid discuss the relationship between the worlds of financial services infrastructure and emerging technology, and how the two can collaborate to create a truly global de-fi investment industry.
With so much happening in the digital space over the past 12 months, year-end is the ideal time to take stock and reflect on all the use cases and developments in tokenization to date, across capital markets asset classes, cash and crypto. In an article by State Street Global Advisors’ head of Macro Policy Research, Eliot Hentov, we consider the overall utility and anticipated pace of future development for each case.
We continue our commitment to keeping you up-to-date with the latest regulatory developments in the fast-moving world of emerging technology. Following our previous edition’s GenAI special, this time we explore trends in the regulation of different types of digital money with our head of Legal for Digital Services, Justin McCormack.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to introduce Vanessa Fernandes de Sousa, our new head of Digital Asset Solutions. Vanessa brings a wealth of financial services, technology and leadership experience to the role, and we’re excited to have her driving State Street’s digital strategy. Vanessa will take over introducing the Digital Digest beginning in 2025, adding her insights and perspectives to the trending topics we will continue to cover. We know there’s a lot to read in this space, and we truly appreciate that you find value in the Digest each quarter. Thank you for your continued readership.
And finally, with the end of 2024 nearly upon us, I wish you all a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2025. I’m excited to see what developments the coming year will bring to the digital asset landscape, and look forward to sharing more with you.
