I attended the FIX conference in Sydney on Wednesday, October 22. What an amazing, informative event!
Let me start by noting how smoothly run the whole thing was. I arrived early, well before the scheduled 8.30 am registration time, to find the registration desk fully staffed and up and running.
Which was great because after registering I could head straight over and get a barista coffee provided by one the event key sponsors/exhibitors, AlgoTech. Angela made a lovely coffee to kick start my day!
Ahead of the conference starting I said hello to a few other early arrivals, and got an idea of the breadth of industry participants in attendance; developers, traders, PMs, regulators, crypto folks, equites/ETF folks … the list goes on.
There were 9 sessions, a mixture between panels and two ‘fireside chats’, along with an excellent keynote speech from Dr. David Snowdon titled “Perspectives on Low Latency Trading from a Reformed Founder” that covered his start up firms development of ultra-low latency switches in use now across exchanges globally. I’m hoping this speech, and slides, will make it to YouTube at some stage, it was an informative and entertaining journey.
- Regulatory Fireside Chat: Navigating Transparency and Regulatory Priorities in Evolving Markets
- Modernising Market Structure in Australia: Regulation, Innovation and the Algorithmic Future
- Trading at the Crossroads: Resilience, Cloud, and the Next Digital Leap
- Digital Assets & Tokenization: A Strategic Side Note
- Fireside Chat: As Markets Transform — How Do We Stay Ahead, Not Just Keep Up?
- (Key note speech) Perspectives on Low Latency Trading from a Reformed Founder
- Fireside Chat: Catalysing Australia’s Capital Markets: Balancing Reform, Investor Access and Innovation
- The Evolving ETF Landscape: Innovation, Access and the Road Ahead
- From Best Practice to Next Frontier: Algo Wheels, Broker Reviews, and IOI Intelligence
- Beyond the Bell: Preparing for a 24/5 Market Reality
With so many sessions its not going to be possible for me to cover them all. For now I’ll just highlight the one on “Digital Assets & Tokenization: A Strategic Side Note”.
At first glance, the title “Digital Assets & Tokenization: A Strategic Side Note” sounded modest. It wasn’t. By the time the session ended, it felt less like a side note and more like a manifesto for how finance might reinvent itself.
The discussion began with a simple contrast: SWIFT versus tokenisation. One relies on legacy rails, batch processing, and the patience of T+2 settlement. The other offers near-instant transfer of ownership, 24 hours a day. But even with the technology in place, the panel agreed, trust hasn’t caught up. Institutional adoption still hesitates on the edge of the blockchain revolution.
There was recognition of the market shift already under way — but also of the frictions slowing it:
- regulatory patchwork across borders,
- competing standards,
- and liquidity trapped in isolated networks (‘liquidity silos’).
The goal of seamless global tokenised markets remains, for now, just out of reach.
Yet amid the caution came a striking example. Franklin Templeton, one of the world’s oldest asset managers, sees tokenisation as a bridge to younger investors who no longer connect with traditional mutual funds. By putting funds directly on-chain, the firm hopes to make investing feel immediate, transparent, and relatable again.
The session closed on a cautiously optimistic note. The future of markets may not lie in the imminent replacement of systems like SWIFT, but in blending trust with speed — building a digital settlement layer that feels as secure as it is instantaneous.
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I’m hoping to get some time to post a little more on some of these in the days ahead if anyone is interested.