How Moody’s Is Powering the Future of Tokenized Finance

Traditional finance and digital assets are merging into a single integrated ecosystem, and the stablecoin market surging past $3150 billion in 2026.

But as institutional real world assets as well as Mui debt move on chain, Wall Street does require decision grade credit analysis before allocating trillions in capital.

Now Moody's. is embedding its credit insights directly into smart contracts and joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange this morning is Malik Bazula, vice president of the Digital Economy Group at Moody's ratings.

Malik, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

When it comes to a practical perspective.

Tell me about the advantages of actually putting ratings in the blockchain.

Yeah, I think if we think about Tie or token integration engine which is our gateway to getting ratings on chain, um, the, the reason why that's really important is we've seen this, uh, volume and velocity of asset issuance is increasing, and investors would like to understand and ecosystem participants would like to understand, uh, the credit quality and the assets that they're dealing with so that's super important.

And and the second aspect of it is that these aspects are are markets are programmable now and so getting these credit insights on chain becomes very valuable for these new digital workflows because now uh these um participants have the insights to be able to make decisions based on this credit information that we're delivering on chain.

And Malik, we're here at the New York Stock Exchange and we've seen plenty of institutional adoptions so far in 2026.

So when it actually comes to the security as well as ratings integrity of this equation, tell us what it means when we're talking about a public blockchain.

Yeah, so, well, uh, you have, uh, public blockchains which are permissionless blockchains and then you have public blockchains and also private blockchains, and we're seeing asset issued on both, um, so there's not necessarily one particular concentration where these assets are being issued.

So from our perspective we wanna be where the assets are being issued, whether that be on public blockchains which are permissionless or public blockchains that are private.

At the end of the day, the asset issuers are choosing the blockchains based on their use cases and based on what best fits their needs.

From our perspective, we want to be where the issuers are and whether that be on public blockchains or private blockchains.

And I do want to expand on the ratings part of this equation.

So tell us how Moody's actually manages risks so that automated rating changes can actually go smoothly.

Very good question.

I think now with the digital economy we're seeing the data velocity and volume increase, and one of the key aspects of token integration engine is to be connected to these blockchain platforms so that we have better and faster access to data.

That data can be in turn leveraged by our.

Analysts for the analysis that they need to conduct for the credit ratings and the and the credit insights that are delivered now with that data with token integration engine we're able to take that information in an event driven manner and send it back to the blockchain and the digital assets for which we are rating.

So now we've got this sort of ecosystem where we're interacting with blockchain environments, getting the data that we need.

The analysts get that information a lot faster, and we're able to provide that information to the ecosystem participants and the markets in real-time fashion or close to real-time fashion as these credit actions actually occur.

Yes, and Malik, for the viewers out there who are wondering when it comes to institutional adoption with more traditional finance vehicles coming on chain, what do you think needs to happen to progress moving forward?

Yes, I think we've gone from the boy who cried wolf moment to the Paul Revere moment where the institutions are coming, right?

So I think that's that aspect of the institutions being on chain.

Um, that's a foregone conclusion.

Now we're there.

A lot of institutions are there.

I think for adoption to happen there, there are probably 3 things.

One is education.

I think there's still a lot of jargon that is used and so people want to understand what they're getting into.

So it has to be simple, right?

Number 2, regulatory clarity.

So we need to be able to understand what the rules are, what the governing aspects are, what the standards are.

When we have regulatory clarity that makes a big difference.

And the third aspect is the quality of what they're dealing with, and that's where the credit insights come into play.

Yes, and I do want to wrap up the conversation by talking about what we're seeing in the stablecoin market because that is an area of digital assets that we continue to monitor and we have seen considerable growth.

So when it comes to independent credit ratings within the stablecoin space, how important is that?

I think it's very important because stablecoins are now the settlement rails for the digital economy. $300 billion you mentioned plus.

Market cap now I think uh 90 trillion in 9 trillion in in transactions um and so when we are dealing with credit uh stable coins we have to understand what is the credit exposure to stable coins because we're being settled in stable coins so this credit methodology, the credit rating methodology that is the first that we've put together helps answer that question in terms of what is the risk exposure when dealing with with stable coins.

And finally, before I let you go, we have about 60 seconds here.

You mentioned a key word that we're all focusing on, and that is clarity.

So what does Moody's expect as we head into the end of 2016 and into the new year?

I, I, I think the increasing pace of real world asset tokenization, uh, I think regulatory clarity will increase the velocity of institutional adoption as well.

And I think we'll see more um types of novel uh instruments and novel things in the decentralized finance space where which will require um additional risk analysis and risk insights.

So I think as that footprint uh starts to expand, the need for risk insights also will need to expand as well.

Well, Malik, it was great having you on the show this morning.

Thank you so much for joining us here today and thank you so much for sharing your insights.

Appreciate it, Remy.

Thank you.