Hong Kong maps 2026 expansion for stablecoins, tokenized assets and CBDC settlement

Stablecoins and tokenized products move toward licensed markets

The government said regulators plan to refine the framework for tokenized investment products so that additional assets can be issued and traded in tokenized form through licensed platforms. The Securities and Futures Commission is expected to expand the rules to support tokenized gold and other suitable real-world assets, while leaving space for further products.

At the same time, regulated stablecoins are expected to become part of Hong Kong’s licensed market structure. According to the Policy Address, those stablecoins would be permitted for trading on licensed virtual-asset platforms and could also be used as a settlement tool for tokenized money market funds.

Digital bonds become a central part of the tokenization push

Tokenized bonds already account for a significant share of Hong Kong’s activity in this area. The Policy Address said digital bonds issued in the city represented nearly 50% of the global market between 2025 and the first half of 2026.

One recent transaction highlighted in the policy document was the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation’s HK$12 billion digital bond in June, or about $1.5 billion. The corporation described it as the world’s largest completed tokenized bond issuance, with about HK$24 billion in orders from more than 100 institutional accounts.

Authorities now plan to make digital bond issuance a regular feature and to test digital currencies across the full bond life cycle, including settlement, dividend payments and redemption. Trials involving tokenized Exchange Fund Bills are scheduled by the end of 2026, and the program could draw on more than HK$1.3 trillion of those bills as officials examine round-the-clock tokenization use cases for banks’ asset and liability management.

Infrastructure work expands around settlement and legal review

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is preparing the settlement side of that market through EnsembleTX. The central bank said it aims to introduce CBDC settlement and 24-hour operations around the end of 2026, while continuing to explore further uses for tokenized deposits.

A second phase legal review is also planned by the HKMA’s Tokenised Bond Expert Group together with the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau. The review will examine how distributed ledger technology can be applied in capital markets. Participants in the group include JPMorgan Securities, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS, Ant Digital and HashKey Group.

Separately, CMU OmniClear Limited is expected to establish a digital-asset platform in 2026 to provide services covering the issuance and settlement of digital bonds. The expert group itself was formed after Hong Kong had issued more than HK$6.8 billion in tokenized government bonds across multiple offerings.

Surveillance systems are due to follow

The market expansion is set to be paired with tighter supervision. The SFC is scheduled to begin operating a digital-asset custody surveillance system in the second half of 2026, according to the Policy Address.

Its CrypTech initiative is then expected to add big-data market surveillance and anti-money-laundering surveillance components in 2027. In a separate effort tied to longer-term infrastructure risk, the HKMA has also launched a Quantum Preparedness Index to help financial institutions assess the need to upgrade cryptographic systems as quantum computing advances.

The next confirmed milestones are therefore concentrated around late 2026: tests for tokenized Exchange Fund Bills, the expected rollout of 24-hour CBDC settlement under EnsembleTX, and the start of new surveillance systems that would accompany Hong Kong’s broader tokenized-finance framework.