The idea of 21x sounds deceptively simple: turn days of market settlement into seconds of code. In a recent episode of the BFRR podcast, hosts Stefan Grasmann and Manuel Klein sat down with Max Heinzle, founder and CEO of 21X, to explore whether that vision can survive both regulatory scrutiny and the stubborn realities of liquidity. A veteran of structured products and corporate finance, Heinzle says he saw blockchain not as a speculative playground but as “the missing ledger for capital markets.” His company now operates what the EU defines as a DLT Trading and Settlement System (DLT-TSS) — a regulated exchange where both trade matching and settlement occur on-chain. “Today we run on Polygon,” Heinzle explains. “Soon, it will be multi-chain.” The claim is bold: no central securities depository, no T+2 delays, and no post-trade bottlenecks — just atomic settlement in roughly two seconds.
The EU’s DLT Pilot Regime: 21X as a Test Case
21X is among the first companies licensed under the EU DLT Pilot Regime, an experimental framework allowing select firms to replace legacy infrastructure with distributed ledgers under strict oversight. Victoria Jahn, the firm’s head of regulatory affairs, calls the DLT-TSS license “the beauty of combining exchange and settlement in one system.” But she is quick to stress that speed does not replace compliance. Every issuer on 21X must pass traditional disclosure and governance tests. “Sometimes the answer is no,” she admits. “Regulation is the trust layer for innovation.” This balance — cutting out middlemen while preserving market integrity — is what makes 21X a litmus test for Europe’s digital-asset ambitions.
Stablecoins, CBDCs, and the New Cash Leg
Trading tokenized securities requires tokenized money. For now, 21X relies on regulated stablecoins (e-money tokens) as the cash leg of its settlement process, taking advantage of the EU’s new MiCA regulation. Heinzle calls the choice pragmatic: “Wholesale CBDC isn’t ready yet. Stablecoins are.” His team is also active in the ECB’s Project Pontus, exploring future interoperability with digital euros. The result is a marketplace where “wallet-native” investors, RWA funds, and custodians can interact directly — but where traditional brokers and neobanks can also plug in through API-based access.
If 21X wants to become Europe’s first liquid on-chain securities exchange, it must solve finance’s oldest riddle: the chicken-and-egg problem of liquidity. Tokenized bonds from Siemens, KfW and others exist — but trade only sporadically in OTC channels. Heinzle says 21X’s regulated multilateral venue and its real-time settlement could unlock that liquidity by removing clearing delays and collateral constraints. The company has onboarded its first market maker and is courting more, offering “DeFi-level efficiency under institutional-grade regulation.”
Crossing the Atlantic: 21X Eyes the U.S. Market
Europe may be the proving ground, but the next frontier is the United States. The company is pursuing a broker-dealer and ATS license, backed by so-called “exemptive relief” to accommodate smart-contract-based matching. Victoria describes recent talks with Washington regulators as surprisingly open. “They said, ‘Come roll this out here. We won’t stop you,’” she recalls. With a more crypto-friendly political climate and the GENIUS Act clearing new pathways, 21X hopes to replicate its European architecture for U.S. markets — this time at scale.
The Architecture of Efficiency
What distinguishes 21X from private-chain experiments run by major banks is its public-chain ethos. Orders and settlements occur on permissionless infrastructure, allowing global visibility and interoperability. That choice, however, comes with challenges: pre-funded wallets, stablecoin liquidity, and smart-contract custody models that regulators are only beginning to understand. Still, Heinzle insists the model reduces systemic risk and could halve post-trade costs. “We aim for institutional-grade security with DeFi-level efficiency,” he says.
The Future: Programmable Markets and the “Spotify Moment” of Finance
In the podcast’s final minutes, the conversation turned visionary. Imagine, Heinzle suggested, a world where assets and money both live on programmable rails — where returns accrue per second, collateral adjusts automatically, and treasury management is handled by AI. He calls it “the Spotify moment of capital markets”: an era of 24/7 programmable finance, T+1-second finality, and global connectivity across public blockchains. In that vision, end-users might never know their trades happen on-chain. They’ll only notice that settlement risk — and the waiting — have disappeared.
Whether 21X fulfills that vision remains to be seen. Europe’s cautious pilot regime and America’s regulatory thaw could converge into a transatlantic market built on code, not paper. If Heinzle and his team succeed, they won’t just have built another exchange. They’ll have rewritten the post-trade playbook — replacing days of reconciliation with seconds of trustless settlement — and turned the once-radical promise of blockchain into the new default of capital markets.
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