Current Programmes

GDF Members are at the forefront of creating market and conduct standards and best practices for cryptoasset and digital finance participants. Our working groups include subject matter experts from across the ecosystem from crypto/digital assets, traditional financial services, legal and academic communities.

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2026 Programmes Overview
Open Innovation and Technical
Forums & Working Groups
Policy and Regulatory
Forums & Working Groups

The GDF Membership in 2026

GDF is global member-led OPEN INNOVATION community for convening industry-led best practice and advocacy for digital finance. GDF is open to all fintech and global financial services firms to participate. We deliver an annual program as informed by our Advisory Council and annual survey in support of our mission:

“To promote and underpin the greater adoption of market standards for the use of crypto and digital assets, through the development of best practices and governance standards in a shared engagement forum with industry, policymakers, and regulators. “

The GDF annual survey shapes the program priorities for the year across best practice, advocacy, and outreach and is delivered through convening both member only and open market community forums and working groups. The GDF Member Priorities for 2026:

 

 

 

 

GDF Advisory Council

We host a monthly member-led Advisory Council on the last Monday of each month at 9am ET/2pm GMT on Zoom, a forum for members to discuss current regulatory, forum and working group trends, topics and issues. The council is comprised of over 25 of leadership and advisory council GDF members. It also helps set the tone for GDFs response on consultations and working group reports and helps to set GDF’s annual program priorities. The 2026 Advisory Council is chaired by Alex Bicknell, Standard Chartered Digital Assets Centre of Excellence.

Recent GDF Reports and Consultation Reponses

Reports

Consultation Responses

GDF Regulator (ONLY) Forum

We host a quarterly forum with regulators and agencies in major jurisdictions to better communicate and align industry priorities and support the outreach for member-led industry responses to key consultations. Over 150 staff across 60 agencies receive a discretionary to the forum with a regular quorum of G7+ conduct regulators, central banks, and global agencies in attendance. The Forum is chaired by Stephane Mailraite, FCA Board Member, and GDF Board Observer.

CONSULTATION RESPONSES, POLICY OUTREACH AND MEMBER-ONLY POLICY MEMBER ONLY WORKING GROUPS

We convene roundtables with members to support the delivery of regulatory consultations. You can find more details and download all of our consultation responses HERE.

US Policy & Regulatory Working Group

The GDF US Policy & Regulatory Working Group provides detailed technical policy input on draft regulatory frameworks and bills, supports the implementation of regulatory requirements, and drives the innovation and growth agenda in the US. The group actively feeds into the rule-making process for GENIUS, as well as the ongoing development of the market structure proposal and securities regulation, alongside educational efforts to bring a global perspective to the US public and private sector.

UK Policy & Regulatory Working Group

The Working Group for UK policy and regulation formulates the GDF member response to ongoing and upcoming consultations on the UK legal and regulatory framework for crypto and digital assets. The group convenes members’ input to engage with the UK authorities as they develop policy, and the regulatory framework continues to evolve. The group actively engaged on the development of the BoE and FCA Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), hosted the State of UK Crypto Policy Event in 2025, and is now actively responding to the consultations and discussion papers set out in the FCA’s crypto roadmap. The group continues in 2026 to be actively engaged on the UK’s evolving regulatory framework as well as live outreach such as the Transatlantic Taskforce on Markets of the Future.

EU Policy & Regulatory Working Group 

The working group for EU policy and regulation is specifically focused on Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) and serves as a cross-industry collaborative effort to formulate the GDF member response to the EU’s proposed regulation. The group convened members’ input to engage with the EU as the framework was developed on both the level 1 and 2 measures. With MiCA now being implemented across the EU at member state level, the working group continues to work with members to engage with EU authorities and to support firms in complying with MiCA as well as the EU’s broader initiatives on digital finance policy such as AI, the digital euro, tokenization and other relevant topics.

MEA Policy & Regulatory Working Group

The working group formulates the GDF member response to proposed regulation from MEA jurisdictions. The group convenes members’ input to engage with jurisdictional regulators, policymakers, and innovators in the region as frameworks continue to be developed. With much focus on the MEA region as it continues to progress legislation and set out competitive policies for the digital finance industry, the working group has convened members to engage on new policy proposals (including Kenya & Jordan’srecent consultations), and also produce cooperative thought-leadership pieces grounded in roundtable discussions held in the UAE on stablecoins, operational resilience, and RWA tokenization.

GDF x W3H APAC Policy and Regulatory Working Group

As part of our partnership with Web 3 Harbour (W3H) GDF launched a joint APAC Policy & Regulatory working group. This working group has been an active place to convene GDF and W3H member responses to ongoing and upcoming consultations in the APAC region as they relate to member priority topics on digital finance and Web3. The group convenes input from the associations’ diverse memberships to engage with and influence authorities across the APAC jurisdictions as policy and the regulatory frameworks continue to evolve. Recent responses have been submitted in Taiwan and Singapore.  Through this working group, members can also engage with both associations on key thematic areas for the APAC region such as the Travel Rule, Digital ID, stablecoins, and other critical focus areas as they arise. The group forms a crucial part of both GDF and W3H’s regulatory advocacy work and provides a vector for sharing information on a cross-border basis in support of global policy harmonization.

Global Stablecoin Working Group (GSWG) by invitation only

The Global Stablecoin working group serves as a focused initiative under the GDF Policy & Regulatory Programs and is for members by invitation only. It aims to address regulatory fragmentation and promote harmonization of global stablecoin frameworks to support cross-border interoperability, innovation, and financial stability.

The objectives of the working group are to:

  • Convene stablecoin issuers and relevant stakeholders to create unified positions on key policy challenges;
  • Harmonize regulatory approaches for stablecoins across key jurisdictions;
  • Work with the public sector to establish mutual recognition and regulatory equivalence between key jurisdictions on either a bi-lateral or multi-lateral basis.

At the start of 2026 the working group published the Global Stablecoin Regulatory Playbook which outlines key principles across ten core areas, including legal classification and taxonomy, reserve asset composition, custody and segregation, disclosures and attestations, prudential and operational resilience, redemption models, AML/CFT compliance, treatment of rewards and yield, and approaches to cross-border recognition and reciprocity. It places particular emphasis on proportionality, functional equivalence, and the role of home-host supervisory cooperation in enabling scalable and trusted global stablecoin networks.

GDF Tax Working Group

The GDF Tax working group convenes the tax experts across the GDF membership to:

  • Endeavour to reduce uncertainty in the wider crypto community around CARF, particularly the obligations on cryptoasset owners.
  • Publish information for the crypto community on CARF, including a self-certificate and how crypto users/businesses can respond to reduce the potential of scammers to use this as an opportunity to conduct phishing attacks or hacks.
  • Work with policymakers and regulators to respond to tax consultations and also raise key industry questions and challenges around the tax implications of regulatory change.
  • Advocacy work on other key tax and information reporting issues which may arise as regulations continue to evolve (e.g., VAT).

The group aims to act as a trusted resource for the industry, and by aligning views, we will be able to combine our efforts to maximum effect to respond to the practicalities and challenges of CARF as well as other tax challenges which continue to arise as global frameworks for crypto and digital assets evolve. Recent Tax WG Educational sessions include the CARF & CRS 2.0 Survival Skills Webinar.

OPEN INNOVATION FORUMS AND WORKING GROUPS

We deliver and advocate best practices and markets standards though forums and working groups that are OPEN to the whole of the industry, not just GDF members, and endeavor to offer a “safe space” for regulated and unregulated firms to collaborate on innovate technical programs through working groups. You can find more details and download all of our member-led working group reports HERE.

The Digital Finance FORUM

Chairs: Lauren Ho, GDF EIR and Kene Ezeji-Okoye, GDF EIR

The Digital Finance Forum is held quarterly and is open to GDF members and the broader community, led by GDF Executives in Residence. The 2026 forums include:

  • Policy updates: on the latest crucial policy and regulatory developments
  • Consultation updates: an overview of ongoing consultations and focal points of industry feedback
  • Digital and crypto asset market data + data on institutional adoption including enforcement trends and other crypto asset market news
  • Fireside chats and discussions with industry leaders and regulators

The Forum is offered at two different times, one for APAC / MEA Afternoon/EMEA Morning and one for US Morning/EMEA Afternoon, to be accessible to our global membership.  Members are invited to present thought leadership pieces and market data during this Forum. The readouts from previous Digital Finance Forums, including fireside chats as well as spotlight presentations, can be found here.

GDF members receive a summary write up from each meeting.

The Tokenization Forum

Chairs: Ownera and Tokeny

The GDF Tokenization Forum meets virtually two to three times a year and is open to GDF members as well as the broader digital finance community, led and supported by GDF Advisory Council members. The forum convenes industry experts to discuss key areas and insights into the tokenization of real-world assets and evolving tokenization strategies, across different asset classes in financial services. The sessions are purposefully curated to drive thought leadership in these subject areas, and should the need arise, serve as a catalyst to mobilize participants to form a working group to drive actionable outcomes, such as a whitepaper or report on specific tokenization areas across asset classes and protocols.

GDF members receive a summary and write up from each session.

The US Tokenized MMF Working Group

Sponsors: GDF and ISDA

Chairs: Federated Hermes, Brown Brothers and Harriman, Hogan Lovells, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, EY (Secretariat and Analytical Partner)

Under the sponsorship of the Global Digital Finance (GDF) and International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) the U.S. TMMF as Collateral Working Groupendeavors to further the adoption of TMMFs as eligible collateral in the United States — technologically supported by the GDF Industry Sandbox and powered by Ownera’s routers leveraging the open-source FinP2P protocol. This follows the successful EU / UK working group deliver The Case for Collateral Mobility in EU & UK Tokenized Money Market Funds in 2025.

The working group is open to GDF and ISDA members as well as the broader digital finance community and is led by GDF Advisory Council members. The key working group objective is to identify and address the legal, regulatory, operational, and technological considerations associated with using TMMFs for margin in both cleared and non-cleared derivatives in the United States, including the requirements for real-time transfer, settlement finality, and eligibility recognition by CCPs, swap dealers and their counterparties, and prime brokers.

The Digital Payments Forum

Chairs: Hogan Lovells and Block

The GDF Digital Payments Forum meets virtually two to three times a year and is open to GDF members as well as the broader digital finance community, led by GDF Advisory Council members. The forum convenes industry experts to further explore the world of digital money and payments and discuss the opportunities and challenges in their development. The sessions are purposefully curated to drive thought leadership in these subject areas, and should the need arise, serve as a catalyst to mobilize participants to form a working group to drive actionable outcomes, such as a whitepaper or report.

GDF members receive a summary and write up from each session.

GDF and ACI FMA Standards Stewardship Working Group

Chairs: GDF & ACI FMA with EY and Kaiko

Focused on promoting and stewarding the Global Cryptoasset Standards (the Standards), this working group is the next phase of the former GDF’s Global Financial Institutions for Crypto (GFIC) Working Group led by Standard Chartered. Initially established to foster a common financial conduct and operating standards framework for cryptoassets in the wholesale market, the GFIC Working Group released the Standards in July 2023.

The Working Group is:

  • Developing applicable scenarios and use cases for the implementation of the Standards on the ACI FMA’s ELAC (E-Learning, Attestation, and Certification) education Portal.
  • Providing a sandbox environment for firms to test attestation and certification to the Standards through ELAC, thus supporting better alignment among market participants and promoting the consistent application of the Standards.
  • Ensuring the Standards evolve as industry matures by maintaining it as a living document that reflects the industry’s ongoing priorities and concerns. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has expressed strong support for the Standards and sees them as a valuable supplement to future FCA rules on cryptoassets.

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT GDF PROGRAMMES AND INITIATIVES:

  • To find out about more of our upcoming events and past event recordings click  HERE.
  • To find out about more of our current open Forums and Working Groups, click  HERE.
  • To find out more about our member only and open Working Group reports click  HERE.