Rachel Pether: Big financial institutions are moving deeper into digital assets, from round-the-clock crypto trading to tokenized markets. Elizabeth Rossiello, chief operating officer at B2C2, joins us to discuss what institutions can do today that they couldn’t do a year ago, and why stronger Africa-Gulf links matter. Elizabeth, welcome to Capital Markets.
Elizabeth Rossiello: Thanks for having me, Rachel.
Rachel Pether: Now, from your conversations with major financial institutions, what can they do with digital assets today that they weren’t ready to do a year ago?
Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, we have to start with the foundational layer of regulation. And even though the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate, the SEC has granted a five-year conditional exemption for on-chain trading of tokenized stocks, and that’s really opened the doors for the institutional investors, the global banks and even some of the central banks globally to get more involved.
We have Qivalis, which is backed by 37 European banks, now licensed by the Dutch central bank and set to launch a euro stablecoin this year. And in the US, we have over 21 institutions, led by Goldman, BofA and Citi, planning a dollar stablecoin coming out in the first half of next year. We’re finally seeing tokenized deposits normalized and shares going on chain, with Wells Fargo, The Clearing House and some of the UK’s largest banks moving into tokenized deposits.
The New York Stock Exchange and ICE are all building that 24/7 venue for tokenized shares. We’ve really hit the turning point of institutional and incumbent players entering that space.
Rachel Pether: Excellent. Yes, and it really did take the regulation moving to bring everyone in. Now, you mentioned, Elizabeth, this 24/7 trading, and B2C2 promises liquidity around the clock, 24/7, when markets fall sharply. What does it take to keep trading, and where do you as a firm draw the line on risk?
Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah. Well, we’ve always bridged the gap between continents, and we’ve been a very global company from the start, one of the most global of the market-making firms in this space. We trade 24/7 from London, Tokyo and New York. We have zero last look, so the price the client sees is the price the client gets.
And most importantly, we’re at the speed of the market. We’re wherever the client is, wherever the volume is at that time. And we build our risk [unclear: “risk exchange exposure limits, we risk our we build our risk program”] around that. As one of the first MiCA-licensed market makers, we have to have that strong regulatory and risk function. So we’re ready for any shock that comes to the market, and when an incident hits, our teams automatically assess positions and we act straightaway.
Rachel Pether: Excellent. And you did mention that you are a truly global firm. I want to go back a little, rewind the clock backwards a little bit, to your background. You built AZA Finance around the practical challenges of moving money across African markets, with the global viewpoint that you have. Where could stronger links with the Gulf make the biggest difference?
Elizabeth Rossiello: Well, I’ve been a long-time believer in the Gulf and the GCC as a nexus of financial transactions globally. It’s really at the center of everything happening in Africa, Europe, India, Asia. And now that stablecoins are the most exciting flow happening to the industry, that makes it even more important.
$60 billion a year leaves the UAE in remittances. And that includes not just retail, but business payments. And those are just the ones that we know about right now. This market is growing, this flow is growing even larger. And we want to see these investors in this region gain access to other continents.
When UAE investors bought into the [unclear: “space IPO”], a lot of them did that through tokenized shares. So now that we have these tokenized products, the UAE is not only a nexus for the region, but it has access to all of the global financial products that are out there. And now we’re seeing more market makers, more players in the space come in to make sure that the liquidity is there as well for these markets outside North America or Asia.
And we also see, I think, again, starting with regulation, not only do we have the ADGM, but we also have [unclear: “the overall license”] in Dubai. And we’re seeing more and more institutional capital attracted into the region. And even in maybe not the strongest market this year, in the first half of 2026 we saw assets under management grow 54% in the ADGM portfolio. And that’s pretty impressive for this kind of market cycle.
Rachel Pether: Definitely. That’s a very big increase. And you mentioned the [unclear: “space IPO”] and tokenization, which is a great segue to something else I want to talk about. Everyone talks about putting assets on a blockchain, but what makes a tokenized asset something investors can actually buy and sell easily?
Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah. And this is exactly the same reason why I got into this space at the start, which is, again, that 24/7 trading access. So when you’re a treasurer and you want to settle on the weekend, or you’re an investor and you want to trade over the weekend, that’s what these products enable you to do.
So that 24/7 trading lets markets absorb shocks gradually. The instant settlement frees up capital. And these on-chain registers simplify ownership. So this is a very exciting change to the way we trade, and that requires new products and new features. A token in itself is not liquidity.
We actually still need these firms willing to commit capital when the underlying share can’t be hedged, like on a Sunday, when spreads widen. Now we have the ability to step in even on the weekend, on a US holiday, in the evening, off hours, and really make sure these markets trade efficiently. That’s an exciting advancement that we haven’t seen before. So the model really matters. It matters in how we trade these new tokens.
Rachel Pether: Yes. You really do need both the supply and demand side of the equation, don’t you, when it comes to tokenization, regardless of what’s being tokenized. And final question for you, Elizabeth. If we sit down again in a year, which I hope we will, what measurable change would convince you that digital assets have become useful financial infrastructure and not simply a bigger trading market?
Elizabeth Rossiello: Yeah, well, I’m already a deep believer. You know, we were one of the first companies to trade stablecoins at scale. And even 5 or 6 years ago, I saw some of the largest credit card companies, payment processors, remittance companies starting to integrate stablecoins into their 24/7 settlement infrastructure. Now they’ve become public about it in the last 1 or 2 years. To me, that was the tipping point.
Now we’re seeing even larger credit card companies, larger financial settlement companies move into this space. And they’re not just doing an initial product ideation, they’re not doing just a quick innovation team. This is becoming a core part of their business, with deep partnerships and a lot of capital committed behind it. That, to me, is the tipping point, and it gives easier access to all the emerging markets, which are still the growth markets here. And investors in those markets are now coming in, adding volume, adding flow.
And we’re seeing more institution-to-institution trading at much higher volumes, because the corporates are using them. There’s global access, we’re welcoming in players that didn’t have access before. And now we’re seeing 5 or 6 years of institutions working on this, and now they’re using it to trade with each other in a way. So it’s not just an incumbent trading with, you know, a DeFi or a new crypto company. It’s now players trading with each other using these tools. So that’s kind of an exciting tipping point.
And we really see, you know, even with the price after the election, after Binance, after everything that’s been happening in the last few weeks, we see the market stabilizing. And that just tells us and encourages us to keep on building in the space.
Rachel Pether: Excellent. Well, that’s a fantastic positive note to end on. Elizabeth, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for everything that you’re doing in the digital asset space, and I hope to have you on again soon. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Elizabeth Rossiello: Thank you.
