Digital Token Identifier has been included in the FIX Protocol

Digital Token Identifier has been included in the FIX Protocol

Supporting efficient and standardised communication for digital asset trading

London, 24^th April, 2023: The Digital Token Identifier (DTI) ISO standard has now been added to the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol, the industry-standard messaging protocol used in electronic communication between banks, asset managers, exchanges, vendors and regulators.

The DTI ISO standard is increasingly being used by industry as it uniquely identifies digital ledgers, digital tokens and cryptocurrencies using publicly available information. Over 1,400 DTIs have been issued so far, including private ledgers and tokenised 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 stable-coins and other digital assets. The DTI has also been recommended by ESMA as a risk management measure under the DLT Pilot regime.

FIX is an industry-standard protocol used by financial institutions to facilitate the electronic trading and trade processing of financial instruments. The protocol allows market participants to communicate seamlessly and efficiently across different trading platforms and systems. Adding the DTI to FIX will allow industry to incorporate the trading and settlement of digital assets into their current trading and settlement operations. This will allow for greater standardisation, efficiency and transparency for market participants trading digital assets.

The inclusion of the DTI has been announced in a recent expansion pack issued by the FIX Global Technical Committee, stating that: “The identification of fiat currencies has been standardised 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, “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, “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.”