# Fireside Chat with Johnna Powell DTCC and Daniela Barbosa LFDT at ETHConf

- Channel: [ETHGlobal](https://streameth.org/ethglobal)
- Date: 2026-07-09
- Duration: 26:43
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-Y-uSbUyh88k
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-uSbUyh88k

## Description

In this fireside chat, Daniela Barbosa from the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LFDT) sits down with Johnna Powell, head of innovation and technology research at DTCC, to discuss how Wall Street's settlement infrastructure is evolving for the digital asset era. Johnna explains the scale at which DTCC operates: 4.7 quadrillion dollars in securities processed per year, custody for over 100 trillion in assets across 150 countries, all backed by netting, risk compression, and capital efficiency mechanisms that no centralized or decentralized entity currently matches. She announces DTCC received an SEC no action letter in 2025 authorizing tokenization of real world assets with the same investor protections as TradFi, with a production ready solution soft launching in July and going fully live in October.

Johnna outlines the two biggest pain points ripe for disruption: collateral mobility (addressed by DTCC's upcoming Collateral App Chain built on Hyperledger Besu, launching Q4) and fragmentation across DLT networks requiring interoperability. She emphasizes preserving legal certainty of ownership, risk management, and operational resilience while redesigning the how of settlement, including extending clearing windows to support 24/5 overnight trading this month. She identifies three areas where tokenization will create value first: treasuries and highly liquid securities (Russell 1000 ETFs, US Treasury bills, bonds), collateral mobility, and cross border extended hours trading. Johnna confirms DTCC's multi chain strategy is chain agnostic by design, with partnerships across Canton, Stellar, and EVM based Hyperledger Besu, and shares DTCC's nine technical evaluation criteria for chains. She closes by saying DTCC and the Ethereum community need each other and are building a bridge from opposite sides.

00:00 Introduction
00:35 Linux Foundation and DTCC's Long History of Collaboration
01:18 What Is DTCC and Why Settlement Matters
02:27 DTCC by the Numbers: 4.7 Quadrillion Per Year
03:36 What Markets Are Asking For: 24/7, Programmability, Finality
03:56 SEC No Action Letter and Production Launch Timeline
05:08 Why Settlement Is the Critical Layer of Market Infrastructure
06:10 Unglamorous but Essential: Corporate Actions and Fails Management
06:38 What Most People Misunderstand About Settlement
07:20 Onchain Finality vs Institutional Settlement
08:19 Aligning Innovation with Hundreds of Bank Customers
09:00 Two Biggest Pain Points: Collateral Mobility and Fragmentation
09:43 Collateral App Chain on Hyperledger Besu
10:08 Multi Chain World and Interoperability
10:37 What to Preserve and What to Redesign
11:48 Three Pillars to Preserve: Legal Certainty, Risk Management, Resilience
12:30 What's Ready for Redesign: The How of Settlement
13:24 Extending Clearing Windows to 24/5 This Month
13:54 Surgical Implementation, Not Wholesale Replacement
15:04 Tokenization Where It Solves Real Problems
16:26 Where Tokenization Creates Value First
16:51 Treasuries, ETFs, and US Treasury Tokenization
17:34 Collateral and Intraday Repo on Digital Rails
17:55 Cross Border and Extended Hours Trading
18:55 Sequencing Foundation Before New Products
19:33 DTCC's Multi Chain Strategy
20:24 Chain Evaluation Criteria
22:30 Ethereum's Strengths and Challenges for Institutional Use
23:13 Hyperledger Besu as Institutional EVM Standard
23:36 Open Source, Open Standards, and Builder Responsibility
25:00 Closing: Building the Bridge from Both Sides

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