Dr Robert Barnes is Co-CEO of BPX, FCA authorised MTF and first trading venue approved by Bank of England & FCA into UK’s Digital Securities Sandbox. Dr Barnes also founded Anopolis, advising market structures, and is a member of the National Timing Centre programme Steering Commitee led by the National Physical Laboratory.
He previously was CEO of two successful regulated trading venues, Turquoise (2013-2022 – awarded Outstanding Equities Trading Venue 2021) & UBS MTF (2010-2013 while at UBS 1994-2010, appointed Managing Director, Equities 2005). His peers voted him The TRADE’s first Industry Person of the Year at its Leaders in Trading Awards in November 2022. In 2023, the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment awarded him its highest accolade, an Honorary Fellowship. In 2024, he earned the CISI Certificate in Ethical AI and is a contributor to Global Digital Finance’s Policy & Regulatory Working Groups. Robert holds a PhD from Cambridge and BA from Harvard. www.linkedin.com/in/robertbarnes888/
Roundtable Room 2 (Level 2)
Open
The case for tokenization varies across asset classes and jurisdictions. The calculus – and speed of adoption of technology - is likely to be different for existing financial centres, tied to traditional financial market infrastructure and where incumbents have significant sway and large parts of the population have access to digital money and financial services, and emerging economies, which can leapfrog. Despite that, the public discussion and the discussion in global fora is heavily shaped by the experience of AEs. This roundtable would aim to address that gap, identifying use cases prevalent in Emerging Market and Developing Economies_ (_EMDEs) and fostering an exchange about options to regulate tokenization. It would be complementary to the work IOSCO has done so far, and supportive of the current workstream on tokenization.
This roundtable will bring together market participants and regulators from select EDME jurisdictions to discuss:
a. Specific use cases for tokenisation in EMDEs
b. Key regulatory and policy considerations, including barriers to tokenisation
c. Regulatory innovation initiatives and challenges of moving from experimentation to regulatory reform