To examine more closely the new challenges facing financial actors, the 2026 edition of the Digital Finance Forum, organised by Luxembourg for Finance, brought together leading experts on the morning of 4 March to broaden and clarify the outlook. The subject is pivotal for the future of financial markets and for European competitiveness, as Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Gilles Roth underscored in his opening remarks: “Finance is not an end in itself, it’s an enabling system. It enables funding, construction and growth. Digital finance can strengthen that enabling system. It can channel capital faster and more efficiently into productive uses. It can support Europe’s competitiveness. And it can and must deliver practical benefits for citizens and companies.”
At the heart of the discussions: crypto and the growing place it is carving out in investment portfolios. For the panellists moderated by Thomas Campione, Senior Manager at Deloitte Luxembourg, crypto is no longer perceived as a marginal, speculative asset, but as an asset class in the process of structuring itself — one whose strategic role in portfolios is set to grow considerably. European regulation, and MiCA in particular, is playing a significant role in drawing institutional investors into the arena. “I don’t think it makes it easier, but safer for sure,” observed Jerome Dave, President of Bitstamp by Robinhood, commenting on the new European regulatory framework. Traditional investors are cautiously opening the door, as Denzel Walters, Head of Luxembourg at B2C2 Europe, noted: “For larger institutional players, allocations tend to be limited to the top 10 or 20 assets, based on liquidity.” Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux, CEO of Coinbase Europe, convinced that “crypto is a very serious macro asset today,” is looking further ahead: “I’m quite excited to see a Euro stablecoin allowing wider participation from EU investors.”
In a first discussion on the state of progress towards Web3, Raoul Heinen, Investment Funds Partner at Linklaters, and Dan Jones, Partner at Morrison Foerster, spoke of a “strategic turning point for the Web3 ecosystem.” Tokenisation is accelerating. The European Union is building solid regulatory foundations, the United Kingdom is pushing to close the gap, and the United States, through the GENIUS Act, is putting in place a federal and state-level regime for payment stablecoin issuers.
A second panel on the adaptation of capital markets to Web3, moderated by Emilie Allaert, Director of Digital Assets Products at Standard Chartered Luxembourg, revealed a hybrid ecosystem currently taking shape — one that blends traditional capital markets with Web3 infrastructure. Ala Presenti, co-founder of Luxembourg investment firm Investre and the country’s first approved control agent under the Blockchain IV Law, stressed that “tokenised assets are not a new asset class but a new way of issuing, managing and distributing financial products.” She also argued that Web3 will give rise to new use cases and new ways of employing existing financial instruments.
Rafal Kwasny, Conducting Officer at Franklin Templeton Luxembourg — which launched its first tokenised fund in Europe from Luxembourg — believes that whatever has already migrated to the DLT is there to stay. He also praised Luxembourg’s experience in this area: “We had a very positive experience with the Luxembourg regulator. We built a kind of partnership, which is a unique situation.” Martin Watkins, CEO of Montus Digital, meanwhile cast his gaze towards the European Central Bank: “The future on-chain central bank currency will be a decisive turning point,” he said.
Another topic generating significant debate: the transformation of the financial sector under the influence of artificial intelligence. Jean-Louis Schiltz, Senior Partner at Schiltz & Schiltz, and David Shrier, Professor of Practice in AI & Innovation at Imperial Business School (London), engaged in a candid exchange on the subject and agreed that AI is no longer experimental — it is now embedded in business models, risk frameworks, and is attracting close scrutiny from regulators. For the innovation professor, the stakes are not merely technological but societal. “One of the most critical issues concerns the transformation of work,” Shrier argued. “Ad hoc reskilling will no longer suffice — what is needed is a continuous learning capability, and the labour market could become uberised.”
To close the morning, a high-level debate on the future of payments took place between Sean Byrne, CEO of PayPal Europe, Matthew Osborne, Policy Director for Europe & UK at Ripple, and Martina Weimert, CEO of EPI Company — moderated by Ananda Kautz, Member of the Management Board of the ABBL. The discussion centred on digital currency, the interoperability of payment schemes, wallets and account-to-account payments. These European-level challenges led to one overarching conclusion: the next decisive step will be the ability of public and private actors to coordinate their efforts rather than compete, in order to build a resilient, competitive and inclusive European payment infrastructure.
Watch the full replay here.