Matthew Van Niekerk is the Co-founder and President of SettleMint, a Belgian company founded in 2016 that enables banks, market infrastructures, and public institutions to move from tokenization ambitions to digital asset operations. His path in the space started 12 years ago at KBC Securities, where early work in post-trade efficiency sparked a conviction: capital markets would be reshaped by tokenized assets, but only if the gap between pilot and production was bridged. He founded SettleMint to do exactly that, building DALP (Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform), which treats issuance, compliance, distribution, and settlement as one continuous lifecycle rather than disconnected silos. Guided by his motto "Let traction lead expansion," Matthew has grown SettleMint from Leuven into a trusted partner across Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan following customer pull and regulator engagement, not speculative market chasing. His philosophy: prove value, earn trust, then scale. Today, he champions an industrial and finance-first vision of blockchain where institutions issue, manage, and settle tokenized assets under full regulatory compliance and operational control.