Last week, I jumped on a huge opportunity—attending Sibos 2022 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Sibos is Swift's annual conference, exhibition, and networking event for the financial industry.
It’s the largest financial services event in the world.
Most attendees were bankers and fintech reps, with some techies sprinkled in. All the major banks had booths.
This isn’t the kind of event I usually attend.
But something stood out:
The amount of interest in crypto and blockchain technology was astounding.
I heard the terms “blockchain” and “digital assets” casually dropped more times than I could count.
But here's the catch—they're not into crypto like we are.
Let’s break down three key areas banks are focusing on in this space.
1. Digital Assets
Start getting familiar with the term: Digital Assets
You’ll be hearing a lot more of it.
A digital asset is generally anything created and stored digitally, is identifiable and discoverable, and has or provides value.
Contrary to popular belief, banks are not ignoring crypto or blockchain. In fact, they've studied it closely. They understand its disruptive potential. They know it’s already reshaped parts of the financial system. And they also know it threatens their traditional business models.
Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.
The financial institutions are paying close attention.
But here’s the twist:
Banks like blockchains, but they don’t like crypto.
They're interested in tokenizing value, codifying money, and tracking assets.
When they talk about digital assets, they essentially group these together:
- Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
- Stablecoins
- Cryptocurrencies
- Tokens
From the tradional financial systems' perspective, cryptocurrencies are just one part of the broader digital asset ecosystem.
The challenge is that cryptocurrency also enables self-custody, something that directly competes with the custodial role banks have played for centuries.
This tension is important to understand moving forward.
Banks are not anti-crypto. They’re pro-blockchain - just in a version that still keeps them in control.
2. Interoperability
One of the biggest hurdles to mainstream blockchain adoption is interoperability.
Interoperability is the ability of different blockchain networks to communicate, share data, and transfer assets seamlessly across one another. This enables users and applications to interact with multiple chains without needing to rely on centralized intermediaries.
Interoperability matters because:
- Banks don’t want to be locked into a single blockchain.
- Global finance needs seamless on- and off-ramps across systems.
- Private chains, public chains, and fiat need to flow securely.
Why it matters for banks:
Think about how many different systems are involved in global finance today.
Now imagine moving seamlessly between them:
- Bitcoin → Ethereum → US Dollar → XRP → Yuan → Bitcoin again
This kind of multi-asset, multi-network flow is the real-world vision for blockchain interoperability.
But achieving this securely requires more than just simple token swaps.
It demands robust, trust-minimized cross-chain messaging protocols and bridging infrastructure.
Each “hop” in that chain may involve:
- A completely different blockchain architecture (For example - UTXO-based vs. account-based)
- Varying consensus mechanisms (Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, etc.)
- Different compliance standards, fees, and finality guarantees
Without a unified framework, every system - whether it’s a fintech app, a bank backend, or a DeFi protocol - would need to custom-build integrations for each blockchain it wants to interact with.
That quickly becomes a nightmare in terms of development, security, and maintenance.
This is why abstraction layers and interoperability protocols are critical.
They act as middleware, enabling traditional (Web2) systems and modern decentralized applications (Web3) to connect with any blockchain through a single, standardized interface.
A leading example of this is Chainlink’s CCIP — the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol — which aims to provide a secure, universal messaging standard for cross-chain communication.
In short, if banks and institutions are to operate across multiple digital asset environments, secure interoperability is not optional.
It’s foundational.
3. Tokenization
And here’s where it all connects.
Remember the two other points? Digital assets and interoperability?
Let's say you accept that there is real-world value in the digitization of value, and the secure hop on and off between one asset and another is crucial.
What's next? What can you do with it?
So, here's the redpill.
If digital assets represent value, and systems can communicate with each other securely…
Then the next logical step is: Tokenization.
Tokenization is the process of representing real-world assets as digital tokens on a blockchain.
Tokenization enables assets (whether physical, financial, or abstract) to be broken down, transferred, or interacted with in a programmable, trust-minimized way.
If each unit of value (a car, a dollar, a piece of property) can be represented by a token, then exchanging that value becomes as simple as running a line of code.
Let’s take a simple example: Say I want to sell you a house
Traditionally, this would require:
- Real estate agents
- Lawyers
- Banks
- Mortgage brokers
- Endless paperwork
And even then, you can’t fully trust that the data you receive about the house is accurate or complete.
You need a lot of trust in middlemen.
But imagine if we flipped the model:
- The house’s data—title, history, blueprints, ownership—exists on a public system
- The terms of the sale are codified - no BS
- You, as a buyer, can verify everything before, during and after eacha dn every interaction
- The ownership transfer happens in one secure action
That’s the power of tokenization: efficiency, transparency, and no middlemen.
In the future, value exchange will likely involve tokens, even for things like spaceships in sci-fi universes.
Our goal is to build trust: no lawyers, no shady real estate business, no lies. Then what better way to build trust than with a public blockchain?
Everything can be tokenized.
In a future built on verifiable digital systems and seamless cross-chain communication, tokenization becomes the engine of value exchange.
Fast, fair, and programmable.