Tokenization of Real World Assets: The Role of T-Rex Ledger in Compliance and Distribution

Welcome back to Market Movers.

The opening bell, the tokenization of real world assets gaining massive momentum in Trad Apex Group, a global financial services provider, just announced it will adopt the T-rex ledger as its default multi-chain orchestration infrastructure.

Now this move is designed to provide a neutral coordination layer for tokenized asset ownership as well as compliance across multiple blockchains.

Apex is targeting $100 billion in tokenized assets by June of 2027.

Well joining me on this Friday morning here at the New York Stock Exchange is Daniel Coheur, the Global Head of Digital Assets and Fund Distribution at Apex Group.

Daniel, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you very much.

Well, first and foremost, let's start out with the big picture and what is happening across digital assets.

So how is that actually navigating the current landscape.

Obviously APEC is the largest privately owned asset service in the world.

We manage around 3.5 trillion assets for our customers.

So therefore we have to scale in order to move these markets.

Last year APEC acquired a company called Tokeni which I co-founded with Luke that has designed a framework to enable the creation of financial instruments on blockchain, on public blockchain, in a compliant way.

So now we are busy bringing that capability across all the products and services of APEC to enable the distribution of tokenized representation of financial instruments on the broader ecosystem of liquidity providers.

And there has been a lot of focus on the infrastructure side as 2026 gets underway.

So for our audience, tell us what the Trex ledger is and about the latest announcement.

You know that is an asset we have a lot of compliance that we need to respect and enforce.

And when we were looking at the infrastructure that were available, none of them were truly built for transfer agents and to enable transfer agent to.

In an environment where that compliance can be enforced.

So together with a number of partners including Polygon, we have joined an initiative that is called the TRX that aims at operating an orchestration layer to facilitate the distribution of those assets on multiple blockchains.

There are quite a number of blockchains today that have liquidity, so we want to make sure that those assets will be distributed in a. align with our obligation as a transfer agent and you mentioned the word compliance there and we are seeing fragmentation when it comes to compliance as well as ownership records.

So tell us what Trex is envisioning as we move forward.

Obviously we have been developing for about 5 years that a framework called the ERC 3643.

So the Trex is leveraging that framework.

The framework is unique because instead of using wallet.

Identify investors use identity.

So it's a solution that enables to carry KYC at the station, removing the dependency that traditional infrastructures have wide listing of wallets which in essence is not aligned with our compliance obligation.

So leveraging that framework together with our reach, we have the recipe now to unlock the potential of blockchain for distribution.

And when we're talking about ID and on chain ID, give us an understanding of how this prevents suspicious transactions from actually taking place in real time.

You know that KYC is probably the biggest point of the industry and email as well, right?

So by leveraging in the identity, we enabled to take those attestation KYC attestation on chain and the various participants to have guarantees and proof that the stakeholders operating on this infrastructure. properly identified in KYC.

So in essence what it will allow us is to have a clean KYC email infrastructure on which all participants can create transactions without indeed having the fear of dealing with the improper investors or stakeholders and speaking of stakeholders, I'm sure you have many conversations with them and you're re in this space.

So what do you think the future of fund and asset servicing will look like.

It will certainly be very different than the one of today.

Blockchain is going to change the way that we create representation of those assets instead of operating on multiple silos.

We will now be operating on a single infrastructure which will allow to truly implement the value around tokenization which is utility.

We don't create tokenization just to have a captive on chain, right?

We create tokens because we want to enrich.

That asset with data and we want to put into action distribution, liquidity, collateralization, but also a lot of things around operational efficiencies.

Today when you issue a security for example you involve a number of platforms that obviously come with a certain cost inefficiencies and in a way do not allow for democratization.

If you allow the cost reduction to take place and to be passed to the issuers that allows. paradigm and this is really what the token will enable.

And finally, before I let you go, obviously there will be leaders as well as laggards in this space.

So what do you expect to see as we head into the next decade?

Well, we believe, and this is something that we've been following for the last 9 years, we created tokeni.

We believe that this industry can only scale if we build a strong partnership, right?

This is not One play company.

So that's the reason why the T. rex is an industry initiative.

Of course APEC is backing it because it's aligned with its obligation of compliance, but we're inviting all the other team in this industry to join and create the momentum that is required to achieve the scale that will truly deliver the value of tokenization.

Well Daniel, we'll have to leave it there.

So thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for your perspective.

Thank you.