From Staking to Tokenized Assets: What Full-Spectrum Crypto Operations Actually Require

When the gavel falls on the U.S. Senate’s passing the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, buy-side investment firms will seek to hit the crypto ground running. Many firms, constrained by previous policy padlocks, will seek to allocate a host of new crypto instruments. The rules of the road will have been set, and the drivers will need the right vehicles to travel them. If the U.S. legislative branch cannot agree on the bill and pushes that gavel-drop down the calendar, however, firms should not take this as a signal to stand down all digital asset preparations. Blockchain’s financial products are an unstoppable force with massive support from financial institutions and U.S. policymakers. Institutional-grade, full-spectrum digital asset operations are the not-so-distant end game that will separate the innovators from the laggards. 

Managers emphasize caution in crypto ops and risk management

In October 2025, a crypto summer saw Spot crypto exchange-traded products/funds (ETFs/ETPs) eclipse $250 billion AUM with ETFs dominating, representing 84% of total digital assets, crypto futures ETFs $2 billion, and crypto perpetual futures logged $400 billion in open interest.ⁱ But those numbers have fallen since and general market volatility has buy-side firms moving with sensible caution: Custody security has risen as a gating factor, regulatory uncertainty remains in effect, and AI bubbles and private credit growing pains remain a concern. The ongoing volatility strengthened firms’ “emphasis on risk management, liquidity and position sizing.”ⁱⁱ The moment firms begin expanding crypto instruments, these will be very top of mind to manage the unique dynamics that crypto brings to the portfolio.  

As such, security and reference data management and institutional crypto technology will have to become top of mind, if they haven’t already. If not, institutions aren't going to be able to get their back offices up to speed overnight. They will fall a year or two behind the curve while the front-office forges ahead trading in these instruments, which creates operational and liquidity risks. The ramifications can be damaging, if not catastrophic.  

Crypto fund accounting complexities and workflow challenges

Teams will have to master crypto fund accounting across complex positions and multi-venue reconciliation in instruments like staking rewards, perpetuals, tokenized assets, and other structured crypto products. Everything hinges on getting a clean, accurate, timely view of positions and exposures. But that all-important single source of truth for portfolio data becomes harder to achieve.  

Volume of operational events soars

With the addition of institutional crypto, firms must prepare for data volumes that could be 10 times higher than their current estimates as these markets scale. For example, a Treasury fund comes with typical operational events like trade executions, settlements, and interest accruals. A tokenized Treasury fund will result in blockchain events like token mints, on-chain settlement confirmations, and smart contract distribution events. Now, crypto reconciliation must process data from accounting books, custody records, token registry, smart contracts, blockchain state, and wallet balances. Moreover, when a manager executes transactions like moving the fund between custodians or posts it as collateral, a new series of events happens.  

Delayed settlements, failed trades, missed opportunities

Without a cohesive view of positions across TradFi, crypto, and cash, firms risk booking trades they cannot fulfill, leading to failure to deliver and failed buys and sells. It is hard to start booking digital asset trades if you don't know your current position. For example, let’s say a manager wants to put up $50 million of the tokenized Treasury fund as collateral for a BTC options position. The collateral management system shows only $25 million available since it includes yesterday’s pledged collateral. Meanwhile, the blockchain redemption hasn't settled into the accounting system yet, so it shows $55 million. The treasury system shows that cash is expected tomorrow after redeeming another tokenized fund (that redemption is still pending on-chain). The portfolio manager sees only one system, so they pledge $50 million, under the impression that $55 million is available.  

The collateral call fails, leading to a scramble to figure out what is going on via manual reconciliation, which may not matter since the manager could miss the execution window. Opportunity lost. 

Risk modeling is key to staying competitive

Stale or siloed data leads to poor risk modeling and portfolio balancing, making it impossible for a firm to remain competitive. The inability to accurately balance a portfolio is more than a reporting inconvenience. A firm cannot perform accurate modeling without a modern data layer that consolidates all reference and securities data in real-time with all business level applications. If not reconciling properly, you don't know your true positions, and you cannot run reports for the managers or investors. 

The transaction lifecycle challenges that define full-spectrum crypto can produce a litany of operational breaks, failed settlements, trades, buys, and failed sale orders. 

A continuous pricing model for Perpetuals

Perpetuals (perps) are like futures that never expire, instead of having to roll over a futures contract periodically. One week after opening the first perpetual futures market in the U.S. in May, Kalshi reported over $1 billion in trading volume.iii With trading now over $24 billion (CoinGecko), Kalshi, Kraken, and Coinbase are eagerly plowing ahead on expanding perps as an asset class. TradFi institutions are hoping to reach regulatory clarity to at least know where the boundaries are. But no matter how those boundaries shake out, infrastructure deficiencies will not be forgiving in managing a continuous pricing model. 

On one hand, with perps, the front office no longer needs to structure tiers of expiry dates as with standard futures. On the other hand, these instruments are marked continuously. Data volumes and events will soar, since perps allow 24/7 leveraged trading and multi-venue positions. To avoid perpetual headaches, firms need unified data foundations that can normalize contract attributes data from different exchanges into one authoritative instrument record; and an operating model that enables intraday P&L and real-time margin management.