Edinburgh Tokenisation Summit
Introduction
The Edinburgh Tokenisation Summit brings together leaders from financial services, asset management, law, and technology for a full day of talks and discussion on 27 May 2026. The event is built around a practical question: how do we move real-world assets on-chain in the UK? Speakers from major banks, global asset managers, regulators, and blockchain infrastructure teams will share what works, what does not, and what comes next. The summit targets approximately 180 attendees from organisations that are actively building or evaluating tokenisation strategies.
Topics will span the full tokenisation stack. Sessions will cover regulated securities on public blockchains, tokenised funds and deposit tokens, the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox, stablecoin infrastructure, and cross-border settlement. Speakers will address the economic case for tokenisation across UK asset classes, from government bonds and commercial property to renewable energy and intellectual property. The FCA's upcoming crypto authorisation gateway, Scotland's Digital Assets Bill, and the role of decentralised infrastructure in institutional finance will all feature in the programme.
Schedule
Registration, networking and coffee
9.00 am – 10.00 am
Session 1: Foundations, Business Models, Economics & DeFi
10.00 am – 11.00 am
10.00 - 10.05 am
Opening remarks and welcome from the host, Maciej Zurawski of Blockchain Scotland
10.05 am - 10.20 am
“The Emerging Foundations of Tokenisation” by Dr Maciej Zurawski, Executive Director, Blockchain Scotland & CEO Redeem Technologies
The talk opens with a single question, why tokenise, and answers it across five dimensions: bridging local assets to global capital, settling cash and asset in the same instant, reducing friction inside large institutions, letting distributed systems self-stabilise, and turning real-world facts into signed, auditable records. It then maps the landscape, compares three asset classes to show that tokenisation amplifies the liquidity an asset already has but cannot create it, separates tokens of present value from tokens of future promise, and uses three failure case studies to argue that a real asset and the right legal structure are not enough without the right buyers, suppliers and incentives. The talk closes beyond finance, on tokenising social good, landing on the claim that tokenisation, done well, is a way of recording and facilitating what matters across many dimensions of civilisation.
10.20 am - 10.35 am
"Tokenisation & DeFi" by Ian Wallis, Founder & Head of Research, Peebles.co
In this talk, Peebles founder Ian Wallis argues that the DeFi casino era is over and that what is emerging in its place looks far more like digital-ready economic and market structure. The session walks the audience through the six stages of a digital asset's lifecycle and uses that frame to take stock of where tokenisation and DeFi are today.
10.35 am - 10.50 am
“Tokenisation Beyond Technology: Incentives, Adoption, and Market Design” by Dr Tong Wang, Associate Professor, University of Edinburgh Business School
Much of the discussion around tokenisation focuses on technology. This talk argues that the more important question is economic: why would market participants adopt tokenised arrangements in the first place? I suggest that tokenisation should be understood not simply as a technical upgrade, but as a problem of incentives, coordination, and market design. Its impact depends on whether it creates real value for financial institutions, investors, and intermediaries within existing legal and organisational constraints. In this sense, tokenisation is not just about digitising assets, but about reshaping how financial markets are organised and how value is created and captured.
10.50 - 11.00 am
Q&A
Coffee break
11.00 am – 11.30 am
Session 2: Regulation
11.30 am – 1.00 pm
11.30 am - 11.45 am
"FCA's vision for Digital Assets Regulation" by Sebastian Ricketts, Senior Innovation Manager, FCA
11.45 am - 12.00 pm
“Fund Tokenisation in the UK: What Changes - and What Doesn’t” by Jamie Gray, Partner, Burness Paull
Fund tokenisation has acquired a specific legal meaning in the UK. It is the use of a distributed ledger to record ownership of units in an authorised investment fund. It is not, despite the surrounding hype, the creation of a new digital asset. This talk sets out what has actually changed under the latest policy developments on fund tokenisation, and the new cryptoassets regulatory regime taking effect in October 2027 – and, more importantly, the legal and regulatory principles that the technology does not change. It examines where tokenised fund units sit in the new perimeter, the three tokenisation structures emerging in the market, and the near term priorities as digitalisation of the asset management value chain moves into its next stage.
12.00 - 12.15 pm
"Building Trust in Digital Assets: Where Regulation Meets Risk & Control" by Laeeq Shabbir, EY
12.15 - 12.20pm
"Regulation - an issuer's perspective" by Dovile Silenskyte, WisdomTree
12.20 pm - 1.00 pm
Panel and Q&A moderated by Dia Banerji, CEO & Founder, Cherpa.ai
Lunch Break
1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
Two lunch options:
Vegan lunch
Gluten-free & dairy-free lunch
Session 3: Institutional Asset Management & Settlement Infrastructure
2.00 pm – 4.00 pm
2.00 - 2.20 pm
Fireside chat: Kara Kennedy, Global Head of Market Development, Kinexys, JP Morgan, is interviewed by Michael Brown, Blockchain Scotland
2.20 - 2.40 pm
Fireside chat: Theo Golden, Investment Manager & Tokenisation Lead, Baillie Gifford is interviewed by Matthew Dawson, Ethereum Foundation
2.40 - 3.00 pm
“Institutional adoption of Ethereum” by Matthew Dawson, Ethereum Foundation
3.00 - 4.00 pm
Panel and Q&A Featuring Alex Pollak, Dovile Silenskyte, Ruchir Dalmia, Matthew Dawson
Moderator: Laeeq Shabbir
Coffee break
4.00 pm – 4.30 pm
Session 4: Technology, Energy, Ethical Finance & Global Outlook
4.30 pm – 6.00 pm
4.30 - 4.50 pm
"Confidential Assets and the Next Phase of Institutional Tokenisation" by Martin Halford, CEO & CTO of Polymath
4.50 - 5.05 pm
"Bringing the Global Disaster Insurance Market On-chain" by Jamie Ball, Blockchain Consultant
5.05 - 5.25 pm
A talk about energy grid tokenisation by Eva Jovanova, Web3 product & policy, ENODA
5.25 - 5.35 pm
“Tokenisation: What can we learn from the US?” by Dr Lisa Cameron, UKUS Crypto Alliance
5.35 - 6.00 pm
Panel and Q&A featuring Martin Halford, Jamie Ball, Eva Jovanova, Dr Lisa Cameron
Moderator: Dr Maciej Zurawski
Networking drinks and canapes
6.00 pm – 8.00 pm
Two type of canapes:
Vegan
Gluten-free & dairy-free
Travel Instructions
By train: Arrive to Edinburgh Waverley train station and take 10 min Uber (or 15 min walk)
By plane: Arrive to Edinburgh Airport and take 25 min Uber
(journey time might increase during rush hours)
How to travel from London
Fly to Edinburgh Airport + 20 min Uber
4h train from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverly Station + 15 min walk
Speaker Bios
Ian Wallis, Founder & Head of Research, Peebles.co
Ian Wallis is the founder of Peebles, an independent strategy and onchain delivery consultancy on tokenisation, security and go-to-market. He spent the previous chapter of his career at Consensys, where he led business development, taking Linea L2 from launch to over $1.3B in TVL and built the MetaMask security programme. Before crypto he held enterprise sales leadership roles at Oracle and Pega, and began his career as a management consultant at Accenture. He writes and speaks on the decentralized models the next economy will run on, and is based in Scotland.
Dr Tong Wang, Senior Lecturer in Business Economics, University of Edinburgh Business School
Dr Tong Wang is an Associate Professor at the University of Edinburgh Business School and a Fellow of the University's GenAI Laboratory, where his research applies game theory, econometrics and machine learning to the economics of blockchain, digital platforms and algorithmic governance. He has led blockchain research projects including "Blockchain and Digital Twins" (EPSRC) and "Green Currencies in a Digital Age" (CRC), and his work covers early-stage blockchain financing and the trade-offs between enforceability and flexibility in smart contracts. He sits on the Scientific Committee of the Economics of Fintech Conference and co-authors the forthcoming Handbook of Digital Economics chapter on the Economics of Blockchain. Alongside his academic work, he consults for fintech and tokenisation ventures and contributes to policy discussions on digital finance and AI regulation.
Event Details
Your ticket includes: access to talks + networking reception + lunch + coffee + drinks & canapes
Our air-conditioned venue fits a vast audience, so invite your friends and colleagues to join!
You can also buy an exhibition booth at this event - contact us to find out more!
Marketing Partners
Sponsors & Members
This event is supported by our sponsors and members:
Sponsors
Platinum Members
Burness Paull
And all our other members listed here.
Contact us here to sponsor this event