Citi Securities Services found that nearly 90% of market participants are actively participating in or exploring use cases for digital assets, blockchain, or distributed ledger technology (DLT).

With more than $25 billion in assets under custody, Citi is the fourth largest custodian in the world.

Digital assets are seen as a business opportunity and blockchain and DLT are seen as a way to address various issues in the securities sector. There is a move towards reducing standard settlement times from two days (T+2) to one (T+1) to reduce counterparty risk. In the United States, the SEC launched a plan to move towards T+1, and there are similar initiatives in Canada and India.

In last year’s Citi survey, 40% of respondents saw DLT as critical to shortening settlement times, but that’s now down to 21%, with many believing DLT has a role, but it’s not. essential.

The definitive shortening is instantaneous or atomic settlement. Seventy-nine percent believe that it can be achieved within ten years.

DLT is seen as a useful tool for post-trade efficiency, with 54% of respondents expecting it to reduce costs by between 10% and 30%.

Some believe that efficiencies are much less attractive than revenue opportunities. At that point, 92% see tokenization as a tool to improve liquidity and increase the range of tradable assets.

Survey participants include a dozen financial markets infrastructures and 300 other institutions, including banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, custodians and investors.

Meanwhile, Fidelity Digital Assets also conducted an institutional survey but aimed at a different audience: at the investment end. There was a significant disparity in digital asset adoption between Crypto and VC hedge funds and high net worth investors (both are notable adopters) versus traditional hedge funds, endowments and pension funds, where adoption was less than 10%.