Mubadala Capital has tokenised a US$75 million private markets fund, Coinbase has established its tokenisation hub in Abu Dhabi under FSRA permission and Saudi Arabia has completed its first sovereign native tokenised title deed transfer. Pearce Clune, COO at ZIG Finance, Venture Partner at ZIG Labs and part of the MFTA network, joins FinTech TV’s Raghda Ibraheem on Capital Markets to examine what this convergence of traditional and decentralised finance requires next.

His starting point: whether financial assets can exist on-chain is no longer in question. The harder work sits in everything built around them, from origination and structuring to distribution, regulation and identifying the buyer. ZIG Finance approaches this as an end-to-end problem across three layers: ZIG Markets for origination, structuring and distribution; ZIGChain as the infrastructure layer; and ZIG Labs as the ecosystem builder.

On the UAE, he points to the combination of sophisticated financial institutions, deep local capital, active regulators and government ambition. VARA in Dubai, the DFSA’s tokenisation sandbox in DIFC and ADGM’s digital asset frameworks give institutions a clear basis to move from exploration to execution.

On institutional demand, the shift is clear. Two or three years ago, the question was why blockchain. Today it is how to originate, structure and distribute assets on-chain, and under which framework.

Guest: Pearce Clune, COO, ZIG Finance; Venture Partner, ZIG Labs; part of the MFTA network
Interviewer: Raghda Ibraheem, FinTech TV, Capital Markets