ANNA and DTI Foundation align ISIN and DTI standards for Digital Tokens

ANNA issues first set of ISINs for crypto assets based on DTIs

London, 31 October 2023: The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA), a global member association seeking to foster standardisation within the financial industry and ISO Registration Authority for ISO 6166 International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs), and The Digital Token Identifier Foundation (DTIF), created by Etrading Software (ETS) to provide ISO standard identifiers for digital assets based on open data principles, today announce the next phase of their Task Force with a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU will allow the phased introduction of new ISINs to identify crypto assets to further optimise and automate more comprehensive data sets within both ISO standard registries.

This comes from two years of work on the joint Task Force, initially established in April 2021, for collaboration to ensure a complementary relationship between the ISO 6166 ISIN and ISO 24165 DTI (Digital Token Identifier) standards. ANNA’s National Numbering Agencies (NNAs), already issue ISINs for financial and referential instruments and have done so for over thirty years, including ISINs for a number of security tokens. The DTI Foundationwas established in 2021 to issue identifiers based on the new ISO standard for Digital Tokens. To date, over 1700 DTIs have been issued. The Task Force has progressed to introduce ISINsassigned by ANNA which are recognised by a new XT ISIN prefix. These are based on DTIs for crypto assets that are not themselves financial instruments. 

The two complementary, interoperable identifiers, with different functions but intrinsically linked, will work together to bring more transparency to the market. Where the ISIN identifies the asset, which has historically always been the case and will continue to be, the DTI uniquely identifies the implementation of the token on a DLT. Under the MOU, those DTIs included in the DTI register can be issued an ISIN at ANNA’s discretion. This integration will reduce operational complexity and industry costs and provide a clear link between an asset and a digital token(s) that relates to the asset. 

Stephan Dreyer, Managing Director for ANNA, said, “Digital assets are a key strategic topic for ANNA. As the financial markets evolve, ANNA continues to work hard to ensure that ISIN remains fit for purpose and interoperable. This is an opportunity to harmonise and synergise with the DTIF’s DTI to provide industry with complementary standards, providing even greater transparency.”

Denis Dounaev, DTI Product Owner at DTIF, said, “We are very excited to collaborate with ANNA to establish a seamless mapping between financial assets and their implementation on blockchains. By embedding the DTI code within the ISIN code, market participants and public authorities get the best of both worlds: the ability to identify the digital asset via the ISIN and the individual blockchain implementations of the asset via the DTI registry.”

ANNA and DTI Foundation welcome feedback on this initiative. Please get in touch with us @ secretariat@anna-web.org / secretariat@dtif.org, more information is available on ANNA and DTIF websites: https://anna-web.org/digital-assets/ , https://dtif.org/.