The Digital Token Identifier (DTI) ISO standard has now been added to the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol, which will allow industry to incorporate the trading and settlement of digital assets into their current trading and settlement operations. This is expected to result in greater standardization, efficiency and transparency for market participants trading digital assets.
DTI is increasingly being used by industry because it identifies digital ledgers, digital tokens and cryptocurrencies using publicly available information. Over 1,300 DTIs have been issued so far, including private ledgers and tokenized assets.
The DTI can be used by regulators to monitor digital asset trades for anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing requirements and also for monitoring systemic risks arising from the trading of global stablecoins and other digital assets. The DTI has also been recommended by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) as a risk management measure under the DLT Pilot regime.
The inclusion of the DTI has been announced in a recent expansion pack issued by the FIX Global Technical Committee, which said in a statement: “The identification of fiat currencies has been standardized for a long time with ISO 4217, whereas the identification of digital assets (including digital currencies) has only recently been standardized with ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI). One of the main changes is to enhance the existing FIX datatype ‘Currency’ to support both ISO 4217 and ISO 24165.”
Sassan Danesh, CEO of Etrading Software, said in a statement: “It is very encouraging to see industry and regulators continuing to adopt the standard. We know that financial institutions are already using the DTI internally, and now, with this news, will be able to use the FIX Protocol to send messages with DTIs both internally and externally.”
Jim Kaye, executive director at FIX Trading Community, said in a statement: “Adding the DTI standard to the FIX Protocol was an easy decision as the DTI extends the existing functionality to the world of digital assets, which helps the market evolve to work with this asset class. We know this is a popular decision and can see many benefits of adding the DTI, including making it easier for the industry to audit their transactions and increase transparency, thereby bringing more efficiencies to the market.”