The Australian Securities Exchange takes a step towards trading tokenized assets

“There is a strong value proposition here that we can basically tokenize any asset and tie it into the ASX ecosystem” , said Ryan McCall, CEO of Zerocap.

Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) may be able to trade tokenized bonds, stocks, funds or carbon credits after a successful proof-of-concept trial conducted by the investment platform in Zerocap digital assets.

On Monday, Melbourne-based digital asset investment platform Zerocap told Cointelegraph that it had successfully used Synfini to connect its custody infrastructure to the platform as part of a trial program , enabling trading and clearing of Ethereum-based tokenized assets.

The trial is part of ASX's distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based settlement project, Synfini, which launched in November. The platform provides customers with access to ASX's DLT infrastructure, data hosting, and ledger services, allowing them to build blockchain applications from it.

Zerocap co-founder and CEO Ryan McCall says it happened last year and “it got a lot of interest” in the institutional sphere, especially from companies exploring ways to tokenize and trade bonds, funds or carbon credits:

“Thinking beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto assets, tokenization of bonds, stocks, property, carbon credits, private equity and all that is essentially illiquid, there is a strong value proposition here that we can basically tokenize any asset and link that into the ASX ecosystem."

McCall pointed out that companies dealing with particularly "opaque and difficult to access" markets such as bonds and carbon credits are looking for ways to effectively reduce costs, save time on issuance and 'open up wider access to investments via token offerings.

When asked about the ASX's ability to offer crypto trading through Synfini, McCall said "yes" but that he didn't see any indicators of interest in this because the ASX and others focus primarily on traditional tokenization/real-world assets.

It should be noted though that Synfini is a separate blockchain initiative from ASX...