At Consensus 2026 in Miami, senior Wall Street executives and Citigroup’s head of digital assets warned that the traditional financial infrastructure is buckling under the strain of round-the-clock, machine-driven crypto activity. The warnings signal an accelerating institutional push toward tokenized settlement and cross-bank interoperability to prevent a repeat of old banking inefficiencies.
Ryan Rugg, Citi’s head of digital assets for treasury and trade solutions, emphasized that tokenized money will fail if it remains siloed within individual banks. “No one wants just a Citi token,” he said. “They want that multi-bank aspect of it.” Large corporate clients managing hundreds or even thousands of bank accounts globally need systems that work seamlessly across institutions, not closed single-bank networks. Rugg noted that faster, always-on payments are a top priority, and while Citi has built its own tokenized platform linked to a 24/7 U.S. dollar clearing system with over 300 banks, broader industry fragmentation remains a core challenge.
Other Wall Street leaders at the conference echoed the concern, pointing out that legacy clearing systems process trades in scheduled batches tied to market open and close times—a design that fails under continuous crypto trading pressure. The friction has fueled demand for tokenized settlement on blockchain rails. Concrete steps are already underway: the SEC approved Nasdaq’s trial for tokenized stock trading in March 2026, and the Federal Reserve confirmed that tokenized securities receive the same capital treatment as conventional equivalents. In a direct response to the infrastructure gap, Bullish announced a $4.2 billion acquisition of transfer agent Equiniti, aiming to become “the global transfer agent for tokenized securities” serving 3,000 corporate clients and 20 million shareholders.
Rugg argued that shared infrastructure built “for the industry, by the industry” is key, but regulations must first provide a fully permissive framework. “Unless it is 100% permissible, we are not going to do that,” he said. The consensus among participants was clear: the gap between legacy market infrastructure and 24/7 crypto reality is now a shared institutional problem demanding urgent solutions.
