How are financial assets currently issued and what custody model do they employ? In the current financial system securities are held with Central Securities Depositories (CSD) in which only Financial Institutions hold accounts.

How are financial assets traded? On exchanges. Exchanges do not hold either cash or securities themselves. These assets are held with the Financial Institutions which connect to the exchange.

How are financial assets settled? Exchange clearing members hold an account with the clearing house which services the exchange. They need to deliver cash and/or securities to the clearing house account at the end of each trading day. Once the pay-in is made, the clearing house does pay-outs to the Financial institutions account with the bank or the CSD. This means that the clearing house keeps collateral on account for each member and each party needs to deliver at the end of every day. It further means that all securities and cash are held in the name of a financial institution.

How does trading in different cryptocurrencies work? Users pre-deposit cash and/or crypto with a custodial exchange. The exchange can only guarantee the fulfilment of settlement obligations by controlling both assets as there is no legal recourse against members (like in the case with a clearing house).

How would trading work on a multi-asset blockchain? Trades can be done as atomic swaps directly between the parties involved. Real-time delivery versus payment without middlemen. The model also works with a custodial setup if one finds this more convenient.

How does custody work on a financial asset issued on Liquid? The asset is held in the users name, and not with a financial institution.

What type of assets does Liquid support? Liquid supports the issuance of both bearer assets as well as permissioned assets (i.e. securities).

What exactly is SideSwap building? The infrastructure to showcase how assets can be issued in the users name and the p2p atomic swap settlement model which it may support. This model has not been implemented on any other blockchain. Liquid makes this possible and uses bitcoin as its settlement currency.

Do people have eyes on this? Not yet. As an example, we issued our own equity on the Liquid network and offered the first 200 users who register their name on our legal registry 250 free shares. This is 0.5% of our outstanding shares. We have so far managed to give away no more than about 40 tranches. You can find more info here if interested (https://twitter.com/side_swap/status/1544646960069726209).