The Financial Conduct Authority has just authorised ClearToken’s first service, CT Settle, a new settlement system for digital assets. Though at face-value this may seem like just another regulatory license, CT Settle marks a significant milestone in institutional digital asset post-trade. And not just for our company, for the whole market. CT Settle is the first building block of a market structure that looks and behaves like one that institutions already trust.

For years, innovative technology teams have chipped away at the pain points of crypto trading; the biggest – and most painful – being counterparty risk. But other headaches have persisted, namely pre-funding and the ongoing movement cash and assets to keep liquidity ticking over.

Many have done impressive work coordinating workflows between venues, brokers, and custodians. ClearToken’s offering is much simpler and, in a way, more traditional: CT Settle ensures post-trade settlement across venues, with rules everyone follows, and legal outcomes everyone recognises.

Why a settlement system matters

Traditional markets separate clearing and settlement for good reason. Settlement is about final delivery, where trades transfer safely and with finality. Clearing is about mutualising risk, managing defaults, and setting the rules for margin and netting.

CT Settle comes to market first as the settlement layer. The full clearing house model will come to digital assets with CT Clear – the digital clearing service provided by ClearToken’s Central Counterparty (CCP) arriving in due course (once authorised).

This construct mirrors how today’s securities markets were built: make settlement predictable and final and risk transparent and manageable. CT Settle is post-trade system underpinned by a transparent rulebook and applied horizontally across multiple trade sources, custodians and banks. This horizontal design is the foundation for ClearToken’s future clearing model, which connects multiple venues and participants through a single, neutral system.

What changes from day one

CT Settle focuses on what institutions care about most:

• The market plays by one set of published rules, reducing uncertainty and negotiation costs
• By netting obligations and synchronising cash and asset movements, capital that would have sat idle can be redeployed, improving capital efficiency without adding leverage.

• Settlement is centralised to a depository rather than scattered across many bilateral instructions. That means fewer errors, fewer failed payments, and clearer records.

• Delivery-versus-Payment (DvP) means cash and asset move together or not at all, eliminating credit, settlement, and funding risks.
• Clear windows and cut-offs make cash in/cash out forecasting easier for treasury teams that must manage liquidity hour by hour.
• A shared framework for confirmations, timelines and penalties keeps participants in sync and reduces operational noise.

These are the signs of a healthy market structure. ClearToken’s white papers have stressed a point that recent outages and forced liquidations have made obvious: technical speed does not grant finality. Participants need governed rails that make completion enforceable in law. CT Settle begins to bring that standard.

Why the UK, and why now

London’s edge is the quiet reliability of the pipes: risk is managed, obligations are known, and when something breaks, the system has procedures that work. Authorisation in the UK signals that CT Settle sits inside that culture. For US institutions, the UK approach offers a conservative, practical path that they understand.

This is also a moment to reset expectations in crypto. A market that trades 24/7 needs standardisation, not just innovation. CT Settle offers a way to reduce prefunding and stop perpetuating idiosyncratic rules that punish traders. How? By managing post-trade the same way every time across venues, with DvP and netting handled by a neutral market utility.

What comes next

CT Settle’s horizontal settlement model creates the base layer. When CT Clear arrives, the familiar features of a central counterparty will follow, to include risk mutualisation, a transparent default process, and rule-driven margining.

Participants can begin to standardise today:

• Map your trade sources and move settlement to one set of standing instructions.
• Align to ClearToken’s windows so treasury can forecast intraday cash with fewer surprises.
• Replace venue-specific policies with the published rulebook and reporting CT Settle provides.
• Reduce pre-funding and redeploy the capital you free up into your core strategies.

The outcome is fewer failed settlements, less trapped cash, simpler operations, and a market that behaves more like the one institutions already know. And it can scale.

A call to standardise

Every market that matures follows a similar path. First, define a common post-trade lifecycle, make it consistent across venues, and then let competition flourish on price, service and innovation. With FCA authorisation, ClearToken’s step is the start of regulated, standardised post-trade for digital assets designed for a global, always-on market.

If you run an exchange, a broker, a market maker or a custodian, the ask is clear: move to standardisation, prepare for clearing, and start collecting the gains now.