When BlackRock chairman Larry Fink wrote, “Every stock, every bond, every fund—every asset class—can be tokenised,” he wasn’t forecasting a distant revolution. He was describing a shift already underway—one that is rewiring how capital is formed, distributed and accessed.

The shift has a name: Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenisation. Today, more than USD 24 billion of RWA circulate on public blockchains, spanning yield-bearing Treasuries, private-credit pools, tokenised commodities and real estate. What was once a crypto curiosity is becoming plumbing for global finance.

Hong Kong’s Answer: The “Leap” Framework
On 26 June 2025, Hong Kong released Digital Asset Development Policy Statement 2.0, unveiling the Leap regulatory architecture:

• Legal & regulatory simplification

• Expansion of tokenised products

• Advancement of use-cases

• People & partnerships

Leap codifies stable-coin licensing, clarifies rules for tokenised ETFs and extends pilots in digital bonds and green finance.
Most importantly, it defines tokenisation as core financial infrastructure, not a sandbox experiment—placing Hong Kong in a category of one.

Singapore remains institution-only; the EU is prescriptive; the U.S. is fragmented. Hong Kong offers a unified, principles-based regime and—crucially—retail access under clear suitability rules, multiplying the addressable market.

Tracks Don’t Run Trains
Issuing a tokenised asset is trivial; finding willing holders, traders and believers is not.
Too many projects learn the hard way: the tech works, the market doesn’t. Bottlenecks are distribution, demand and relevance—not regulation.

Winners share a formula: the right asset, wrapped the right way, for a clearly defined user.

• Tokenised Treasuries deliver transparent yield to global savers shut out of dollar liquidity.

• Maple Finance matches institutional borrowers with crypto-native lenders via on-chain risk rails.

Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble, led by the HKMA, is stress-testing tokenised bonds, funds, carbon credits, EV-charging infrastructure and supply-chain finance. The pieces are on the board; the breakout product is still missing.

The Final Hurdle: Product-Market Fit
Foundations are laid:

• Regulatory clarity

• Institutional buy-in

• Public-private sandboxes

• A bridgehead to mainland China’s digital-asset strategy

The next phase will be decided by traction, not policy.
Can Hong Kong:

1. Attract Southeast Asian savers into yield-bearing, fully-backed stable-coin products?

2. Wrap Chinese industrial assets into globally tradable, compliant tokens?

3. Spawn a new generation of RWA products that are not merely legal, but needed?

If the answer is yes, Hong Kong will not merely lead the tokenisation race; it will define the next financial era.