Collateral operations in a tokenised world
What changes for post-trade teams when collateral moves on a ledger: five decisions, three holding models, and why the cash leg sets the pace.
- Published
- 14 October 2026
- Author
- Simo Lamine
- Regions
- UK · Europe · Americas · Asia-Pacific
- Reading time
- 3 min
5
operating decisions, from eligibility to default
3
models for holding tokenised collateral
4
clauses every collateral agreement needs to revisit
6
questions for your next steering committee
The ledger is the easy part
Tokenised collateral is usually presented as a technology upgrade. In practice the harder questions are about the operating model:
- Who can move an asset?
- Under which agreement?
- At what time of day?
- What happens when a step fails?
This paper works through those questions in the order a collateral team meets them: eligibility, control, valuation, settlement and default.
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Sources
- 1ESMA, ESMA seeks evidence on the use of tokenised collateral in central clearing, 9 October 2026.
- 2ECB, ECB paves way for acceptance of DLT-based assets as eligible Eurosystem collateral, 27 January 2026.
- 3CFTC, CFTC Letter No. 25-39: Tokenized Collateral Guidance, 8 December 2025.
- 4ISDA, ISDA Margin Survey Year-end 2025, 29 April 2026.
- 5ECB, Eurosystem brings central bank money to tokenised finance, 21 September 2026.
- 6HKMA, HKMA announces the new phase of Project Ensemble to support real-value transactions in tokenised deposits and digital assets, 13 November 2025.
- 7European Union, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets (MiCA), 31 May 2023.
- 8US Congress, GENIUS Act (Public Law 119-27), 18 July 2025.
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