As digital assets continue their transition from emerging technology to institutional market infrastructure, the conversation is shifting. Questions around whether institutions will participate have largely been replaced by discussions about how they can participate efficiently, securely and at scale.
For Jenna Wright, Managing Director, Digital Assets at LMAX Group, the next chapter of institutional adoption will be defined by operational integration, capital efficiency and the convergence of traditional and digital market infrastructure.
Ahead of Capital Pioneer Digital Assets Summit 2026, Wright spoke to Capital Pioneer about stablecoins, tokenisation, perpetual futures and why the industry’s biggest opportunities now lie in the plumbing rather than the products.
From experimentation to implementation
Over the past 12 months, Wright has seen a notable change in the conversations taking place across the institutional landscape.
“The biggest change is that participation has become much more operationally focused,” she says.
Stablecoins are a prime example. While once viewed largely through the lens of cryptocurrency adoption, institutions are increasingly exploring them as settlement infrastructure capable of moving capital outside traditional banking hours.
That does not mean the industry has reached full-scale adoption. Regulatory clarity remains a key consideration, particularly for banks. However, Wright believes the questions institutions are asking today are significantly more advanced than they were even a year ago.
“The discussions are becoming far more practical,” she explains. “That is a strong indication of where the market is heading.”
Building the foundations for scale
When institutions enter the digital asset market, the priorities remain familiar: credit, collateral, custody and liquidity.
According to Wright, the ability to deploy capital efficiently without pre-funding multiple venues is becoming increasingly important.
“Institutions need to avoid having capital trapped across separate pools of collateral,” she says. “Credit and collateral infrastructure become fundamental when you’re talking about participation at scale.”
The separation of execution and custody is another critical consideration. Much like traditional financial markets, institutions increasingly want assets to remain with a trusted custodian while accessing liquidity elsewhere.
Alongside those structural requirements, market fundamentals remain non-negotiable.
“Deep liquidity, transparent pricing and resilient execution are standards institutions already expect in mature markets such as FX,” Wright says.
“Digital assets increasingly need to meet those same expectations.”
The race towards capital efficiency
Recent industry developments, including LMAX Group’s work with Standard Chartered and the launch of Kiosk, highlight the growing focus on institutional infrastructure.
Wright believes custody, collateral and market access are all evolving in the same direction.
“The thread running through all three is capital efficiency,” she explains. “Capital should move as fast as the risk it supports.”
In custody, established financial institutions are increasingly building the solutions the market has been waiting for.
In collateral management, the trend is towards consolidation, bringing custody, compliance, collateral management and connectivity together within a single ecosystem.
At the same time, institutional-grade market access is expanding across asset classes, allowing firms to access digital markets through existing workflows and infrastructure rather than creating entirely new operating models.
Bridging traditional and digital finance
For LMAX Group, the objective is not to persuade institutions to adopt unfamiliar systems but to make digital assets fit naturally within existing operating environments.
“We’ve applied the same technology and execution principles we use in FX to digital assets,” Wright says.
In many ways, she argues, trading Bitcoin against the dollar is operationally closer to trading a traditional currency pair than many market participants assume.
The firm’s Omnia platform reflects that philosophy, bringing together fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies and stablecoins through a single API.
“The goal is to remove operational and cross-border barriers between asset classes,” she says. “Institutions should be able to move between traditional and digital markets much more seamlessly.”
Why tokenisation matters
While tokenisation remains one of the most discussed themes across capital markets, Wright believes the industry’s attention is sometimes focused on the wrong aspect.
“The value isn’t simply putting an asset on a blockchain,” she says.
Instead, she sees the greatest opportunities emerging in areas that improve how institutions move and deploy capital.
Tokenised cash and money market funds are among the most compelling use cases, offering greater flexibility over where capital is held and how quickly it can be mobilised. Collateral management presents another major opportunity.
“If assets can move and settle in real time, institutions have less need to pre-position capital across multiple venues and accounts,” she explains.
Longer term, that logic extends to tokenised securities and other traditional assets. But for tokenisation to succeed at institutional scale, Wright argues that robust custody, interoperability and regulatory clarity must accompany the technology itself.
Stablecoins become market infrastructure
For years, stablecoins have sat at the centre of digital asset discussions. Wright believes their future importance will be less about being a standalone product and more about becoming part of financial market infrastructure.
“Their biggest role will be as settlement and collateral infrastructure,” she says.
As markets increasingly operate beyond traditional banking hours, stablecoins offer the possibility of moving value and collateral 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That capability becomes particularly important during market volatility, when risk can change rapidly but capital often remains constrained by fixed banking hours and settlement cycles.
“I think stablecoins will become less interesting as a product and more important as part of the plumbing of financial markets,” Wright says.
Beyond crypto: the rise of perpetual futures
Among the developments Wright is most excited about is the evolution of perpetual futures.
Traditionally associated with crypto markets, perpetual futures are now expanding well beyond digital assets.
“The perpetual futures story has stopped being a crypto story,” she says.
LMAX has already applied the model to gold, creating 24/7 access to an asset class where trading activity has historically been constrained by fixed market hours.
Wright sees significant potential for similar structures across equities and other asset classes.
“What excites me is the optionality,” she explains. “You can have a single, continuous instrument that works across equities, commodities, FX and crypto. That’s the beginning of a genuinely cross-asset system.”
Looking ahead
For Wright, the next phase of institutional adoption will not be defined by new tokens or headline-grabbing innovations. Instead, it will be determined by the industry’s ability to solve practical operational challenges.
“The first phase was about access,” she says. “Can institutions trade digital assets, custody them securely and operate within a regulatory framework?”
The next phase is about efficiency.
Can assets remain with trusted custodians while still being used as collateral? Can capital move seamlessly between venues? Can settlement operate around the clock? And can digital assets sit alongside FX, commodities and other exposures within a single operating model?
“Those are much less glamorous questions than launching another token,” Wright concludes. “But they’re what will determine whether institutional adoption becomes genuinely scalable.”
Jenna Wright, Managing Director, Digital Assets at LMAX Group, will be speaking at the Capital Pioneer Digital Assets Summit on 21 September 2026.
