25 Pages | 8 Exhibits | 27 Conclusions, Recommendations & Action Items
September 2026 is the month interoperability stopped being a white-paper word. Pontes went live at the ECB on September 21, the SEC's innovation exemption for tokenized stock trading arrived on September 17, Citi ran the first live US-bank transactions on Swift's ledger, and DTC launches its tokenization service in October. Every one of those arrangements is described by its sponsor as connectivity, and every one arrives on an operations desk as a transfer of value between two records that share neither a finality rule nor a calendar. That transfer is a settlement; this paper calls it a crossing.
There are five ways to cross, and the technology is the least of what separates them. The twin, the mirror, the bridge, the synchronizer and the orchestrated instruction differ in who holds the position in flight. The twin is a depositary receipt, the mechanism the industry has operated since 1927, and its one recurring failure, issuance without deposit, reappeared on a cross-chain bridge on April 18, 2026 as $292 million released against a burn that never happened. The bridge is the only mechanism with no accountable holder of the in-flight position.
The report sets out the five mechanisms and the party at risk in each, reads the DTC no-action letter as a depositary agreement, and counts the crossings the cash leg makes before it is central bank money.
Selected Conclusions
• The crossing is a settlement. Every interoperability arrangement now live or launching moves value between two records with different finality rules, with a party at risk between the two; the crossings a firm's transactions make measure the exposure, and the networks it has joined do not.
• The twin is a depositary receipt. DTC's tokenized entitlements and Citi's depositary receipts on SIX are the mechanism the industry has run since 1927; its one recurring failure reappeared on a bridge in April.
• The in-flight window is set by the less available calendar. Fedwire moves to six days no earlier than 2028 and sterling Sundays no earlier than 2029; the weekend position is the bank's.
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