About GDF

Global Digital Finance is an industry association accelerating digital finance through the adoption of best practices and standards and engagement with regulators and policymakers.

GDF Mission

The GDF mission is to make finance global and digital. Digital assets and decentralized financial market infrastructure have the potential to reshape financial services and markets to create truly global, accessible, and inclusive finance.

The GDF community works 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.

How GDF started

GDF is a not-for-profit industry body that promotes the adoption of best practices for crypto and digital assets, and digital finance technologies through the development of conduct standards, in a shared engagement forum with market participants, policymakers and regulators.

Established in 2018, GDF has convened a broad range of industry participants, with 300+ global community members – including some of the most influential digital asset and token companies, academics and professional services firms supporting the industry. GDF is proud to include BitMex, Coinbase, DLA Piper, EQONEX Group, EY, Gate.io, Hogan Lovells, Huobi, the London Stock Exchange Group, Ownera, R3, SDX, and Standard Chartered as patron members.

The GDF Code of Conduct (the ‘Code’) is an industry-led initiative driving the creation of global best practices and sound governance policies. GDF is informed by close conversations with regulators and developed through open, inclusive working groups of industry participants, legal, regulatory and compliance experts, financial services incumbents and academia. The principles set out in the Code undergo multiple stages of community peer review and open public consultation prior to ratification.

Since developing the code, GDF has focused on regulatory and policymaker outreach and advocacy. We create forums for engagement between crypto firms, financial institutions, regulators, and lawmakers. Our Co-Regulatory approach calls for further engagement between agencies and industry to drive global, digital innovation, with meaningful compliance in mind.

GDF Ways of Working

GDF is a member-led organization. Our community sets our priorities and guides the work that we do. Whether codes, standards, reports, or pilot programmes, our output is developed through our Working Groups.
The Working Groups are co-chaired by two Advisory Council Members. The Advisory Council meets once per month to discuss GDF activities, developing industry requirements, launch new working groups and initiatives, and approve new Codes of Conduct. The final decisions of GDF’s direction is set by the Patron Board, made up of GDF Patron members and Board Members.

The GDF Executive Team coordinates GDF initiatives and events, from the working groups to responding to public consultations. Our team of regulatory experts [LINK] lead engagement with global agencies.