The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) has launched a new technology taskforce (TF-22) on digital assets.
The initiative has been created to help examine how international securities identification numbers (ISINs) may be able to help identify possible harmonisation of standards.
ANNA aims to create standardisation within the financial industry by upholding the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) principles and by promoting ISINs, and classification of financial instrument codes (CFIs), and financial instrument short names (FISN) for financial instruments.
The new technology taskforce will examine the identification of digital assets such as tokens, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
It will also provide recommendations on the potential benefits of creating guidelines for the assignment of ISINs to all kinds of digital assets including asset tokens, payment tokens, utility tokens and hybrid tokens.
Uwe Meyer, executive director and secretariat, ANNA, said: “With digital assets emerging as a new investment class, the availability of quality, standardised reference data will serve as the foundation for a trusted token market.”
He added: “We hope that this taskforce will ensure that we continue to utilise the ISIN standard wherever we can be sure it will be of most use to the industry. This evaluation process on digital assets is an important part of that journey.”
Manuel Alonso, convenor of ANNA TF 22, commented: “Issuers of digital tokens are in urgent need of trusted, machine-readable, International Organization for Standardization identifiers and related standards. We have set up the technology taskforce to assess the role that ISINs may take to help this process.”
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