Shanny Basar

Shanny Basar connects trading technology, digital assets and market structure, focusing on how new infrastructure reshapes institutional finance and regulation. She is a senior writer at Markets Media and has been a financial journalist since 2000, following more than a decade working in banking. Her coverage combines technical detail with clear explanations of how innovations such as tokenization, prediction markets and artificial intelligence change the mechanics of capital markets. She frequently anchors stories in data, industry reports and interviews with market operators, regulators and technology providers.

Tokenization and Onchain Market Infrastructure

Tokenization and the move of traditional assets onchain are a core strand of Basar’s recent work. In a feature on tokenized real‑world assets, she reports that the transferable RWA market is projected to grow from $27 billion to $400 billion by 2030, drawing on analysis from KeyRock and Securitize and highlighting how infrastructure is needed to turn tokenized assets into functioning markets. She covers forecasts that assets tracked on public blockchains but not yet freely transferable could reach $5 trillion over the same period, and situates these projections alongside concrete examples of tokenized fund suites expanding at firms such as Franklin Templeton.

In another piece, she examines claims that digital assets will absorb parts of traditional finance, framing tokenization as an extension of existing market plumbing rather than a parallel system. Her reporting follows tokenization from early concepts to production deployments, as in coverage that describes tokenization moving from “PowerPoint to production,” focusing on how platforms and financial institutions operationalise tokenized securities. Related articles she writes track specific implementations, including a central securities depository mirroring securities ownership records on a public blockchain for the first time, tokenised bond funds opened in multiple markets, and new U.S. venues trading tokenized NMS stocks under an innovation exemption.

Across these stories, Basar emphasises institutional products - Treasury funds, bond funds, money market funds - and shows how tokenized settlement and collateral are being integrated into regulated, mainstream market workflows.

Prediction Markets and Exchange Competition

Basar devotes consistent attention to prediction markets and their impact on incumbent exchanges. In coverage of institutional access to event contracts, she details how a digital assets prime brokerage, an investment bank and a clearing firm expand institutional participation on Kalshi, showing how regulated prediction markets interface with established intermediaries. She explores the broader thesis that tokenization, prediction markets, perpetuals and extended trading hours could expand the market for incumbent exchanges rather than simply divert business, profiling competition from venues such as Kalshi, Polymarket and Hyperliquid while examining where incumbents retain advantages.

Regulatory response is a recurring element: one article reports how the SEC and CFTC are expected to use existing powers to set rules for digital asset market structure after the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the U.S. Senate, linking legislative setbacks to agency‑level action.

In another, she describes panellists warning the SEC that changes to Rule 611, the trade‑through rule, could harm the quality of the National Best Bid and Offer, underscoring how microstructure rules interact with new trading venues. She also follows corporate developments, noting that prediction markets have become one of the fastest‑growing revenue products at Coinbase, and explaining how that growth alters competitive dynamics across exchanges and trading platforms.

Her coverage of Ripple Prime preparing for “Wall Street 2.0” sits in the same arc, focusing on the build‑out of prime services and infrastructure at the boundary between crypto markets and institutional trading.

AI and Technology Shifts in Trading

Artificial intelligence in capital markets is another defining focus. In a feature on Deutsche Börse, Basar explains how the exchange group views AI as an opportunity, and links its strategy to a cluster of related developments across venues and banks.

She profiles launches such as Nasdaq Calypso’s agentic capabilities, describing governed agentic workers designed to address manual processes that persist across capital markets. She reports on BNP Paribas partnering with Google Cloud on agentic AI and cloud, tracing the bank’s path toward broader deployment of AI in trading and risk workflows.

Supervisory perspectives enter her work through coverage of ESMA’s new supervisory priority on digital innovation, where she notes that initial focus will fall on how supervised entities use artificial intelligence and tokenisation.

On the trading desk, she writes about Tradeweb enhancing its Ai‑Price tool as corporate bond trading shifts toward more electronic and automated execution. She also covers asset management, documenting Baillie Gifford’s partnership with Essentia Analytica for an AI programme that delivers behavioural intelligence directly into an asset manager’s data and AI environment.

Earlier pieces on trading analytics, such as the launch of BestEx Research’s Pulse AI interface, frame AI‑native tools as a way for institutions to optimise execution and make data‑driven decisions in equities and futures. Taken together, these articles show Basar following AI from infrastructure and regulation through to its concrete impact on pricing, execution and portfolio behaviour.

Corporate Banking, Fixed Income and Regulation

Basar continues to cover structural change in corporate and investment banking, fixed income and regulation alongside her technology beat.

In a piece on McKinsey’s analysis of corporate and investment banking, she highlights five big shifts, including new market structures and a technology‑led “art of the possible,” illustrating how advisory work and bank strategy intersect. Her reporting on fintech firms targeting the bond market explores how new platforms seek liquidity and electronic trading in fixed income, reflecting longstanding attention to the search for liquidity in these markets.

She examines venture capital dynamics in coverage showing female founders had a smaller share of U.S. VC deals, adding capital allocation and diversity to her financial markets lens. In profiling NTAM’s Guazo writing a “recipe for international business,” she lays out how a buy‑side executive approaches global expansion and organisational change, continuing a pattern of interviewing market participants about strategy and structure. Regulatory process appears in her article on a deluge of consultation papers, AI and new regulations, where she connects supervisory initiatives and technology trends to the burden and direction of rule‑making.

Earlier work on MiFID II and on equivalence warns about how changes in European trading rules and cross‑border recognition can shift trading volumes and regulatory risk, underlining her long‑running interest in how regulation shapes market behaviour. These pieces are consistent with a background that includes covering the 2008 financial crisis and bring that perspective into current debates over market structure and reform.

Across these themes, Basar writes within Markets Media’s focus on trading and technology in capital markets, using formats such as daily email features and market‑driven stories to connect specific developments to larger structural trends. Her beat is finance, but her distinguishing emphasis is on the practical intersection of innovation, regulation and institutional market infrastructure.