Appold Market Watch - Week ending 11 September 2026
Market Update and Industry News - Week Ending 11 September 2026
🔷 Nasdaq is expanding its relationship with Payward, parent company of Kraken, including a $100 million investment via Nasdaq Ventures and continued joint development of the Nasdaq Equity Token (NET) framework targeting a Q2 2027 launch.
Appold view: A clear bet that tokenised equities will become part of the mainstream market structure. For institutions, the harder question is not whether to engage, but how to do so without creating fragmented liquidity, duplicated infrastructure and new control gaps.
🔷 ESMA, the European market regulator, in its latest TRV Risk Monitor, warns that deepening links between crypto markets and traditional finance could amplify the risk of shocks spreading across the wider financial system, citing tokenised equities and recent DeFi exploits as key channels.
Appold view: Coincidental timing considering the above Nasdaq and Kraken announcement. As tokenised assets connect into traditional finance, governance, operational resilience and third-party risk move firmly into the regulator’s line of sight. Institutions adopting the technology will need controls to mature at the same pace as the rails.
🔷 DBS and Citi completed the first weekend cross-border USD payment between Singapore and the US using tokenised deposits on the Swift Digital Ledger, with the transaction taking minutes rather than the standard two business days.
Appold view: A weekend USD payment completing in minutes rather than two business days is a fairly brutal advert for the limitations of legacy settlement. The institutional opportunity is obvious, but so is the implementation challenge, where tokenised deposits only scale when legal, operational and control frameworks are as robust as the technology.
🔷 Broadridge has launched DLX, an end-to-end tokenisation and digital asset infrastructure platform covering issuance, trading, settlement, servicing, custody, and distribution across multiple financial instruments, with connectivity to the DTCC Tokenisation Service. The platform builds on Broadridge's existing Distributed Ledger Repo business, which already processes over $350 billion in daily tokenised repo activity.
Appold view: With the $350 billion repo already tokenised daily, DLX arrives with rather more credibility than the average tokenisation launch. With the market moving from pilots to integrated infrastructure, firms now need to decide where they participate, which rails they back and whether their operating models are actually ready for them.
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