Why digital assets are set to become mainstream in APAC

Uncertainty has been lifting, in stages rather than all at once.

In Singapore, one of Asia's most tightly regulated banking hubs, the early conversation around digital assets ran counter to everything the city-state stands for. Being unregulated was the whole appeal. Crypto's original pitch to the public rested on sitting outside the system entirely, beyond the reach of any single institution or authority.

That story fell apart initially with Mount Gox and collapsed with the FTX saga. It showed investors exactly what an unregulated market can cost when it fails, and it left a lasting mark on how seriously institutions now weigh custody and counterparty risk before touching the asset class.

The regulatory clarity institutions were waiting for 
For years, that caution showed up clearly in Singapore. Banks and external asset managers here were engaged early, but many held back, and regulatory uncertainty out of the US was consistently cited as the reason.

That uncertainty has been lifting, in stages rather than all at once. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, gave the US its first federal framework for stablecoins. The CLARITY Act, which would settle jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC for the wider market, passed the House the same month but stalled in the Senate in September, and its path forward is unclear.  

In the meantime, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed "Regulation Crypto Assets,” its first tailored framework for crypto offerings, which means the rulebook is being written even while the legislation is debated.

For institutions in Singapore, this matters more than any single vote because it removes the last major external reason to wait. Singapore’s own strength has always been consistency: the expectation here has long been that digital assets would be held to similar standards as any other asset class, and the firms that built for that expectation from the start are now the ones best placed to move.

For example, in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s revised Guide on the Tokenisation of Capital Market Products published late last year, a "same activity, same risk" principle is applied to both tokenised and non-tokenised capital markets products.  

The regulatory clarity institutions were waiting for is now largely in place.

Institutions are voting with their infrastructure 
Institutions are showing where they stand through the infrastructure they're choosing to build on. Established, global asset managers are bringing flagship products on-chain through regulated rails.  

Fidelity International launched its first tokenised liquidity solution in May this year, assessed AAA-mf by Moody’s, with J.P. Morgan providing administration and custody. Hamilton Lane, a global private markets firm managing over US$900b ($1.148b), has separately introduced a tokenised share class for one of its flagship private markets strategies.

Classification: Internal 
Choices like these, built on regulated infrastructure rather than experimental or offshore rails, are a meaningful signal of where institutional trust is heading. This is the shift my colleagues and I have described elsewhere as digital assets moving from curiosity to institutional capability: what wealth managers and private banks now ask for is not exposure for its own sake, but access, advice, and integration into the way they already serve clients.

What the data shows 
The investor data tells a related but sharper story. A 2026 APAC tokenisation report, which surveyed high-net-worth and institutional investors across the region, found that crypto holders are roughly seven times more likely than non-crypto investors to have already allocated to tokenised real world assets, and far more decisive about how much to commit.  

This is not a coincidence; the infrastructure that supports crypto investing, custody, on-chain settlement, wallet, and key management, is largely the same infrastructure that supports tokenised RWAs. For a bank or asset manager, building the capability to serve one client base responsibly prepares it to serve the other. Separately, the report found that portfolio diversification leads the rationale for holding tokenised assets, at 72%, ahead of access to new markets and yield.

The demand side is just as clear. An earlier survey of high-net-worth investors across Asia found that 60% were ready to increase their crypto allocations on the strength of a two- to five-year outlook. Notably, investors in the tokenisation survey were allocating even where they still saw open questions, with around four in 10 citing legal certainty over their rights as a barrier. That investors are moving ahead regardless says a great deal about how much conviction has built.

A familiar pattern, playing out again 
This is where the trajectory becomes clear. Tokenised real-world assets and tokenised access to private markets, private equity, private credit, real estate, remain concentrated amongst institutional and professional investors today, largely because the custody and legal infrastructure around them is still being proven out.  

But that is exactly the phase every financial innovation goes through before it broadens. ETFs and online brokerages once served institutions first too, before the infrastructure matured enough for banks and wealth managers to extend that access more widely.

Digital assets have travelled a long way from the unregulated fringe to regulated institutional infrastructure in just a few years. The long-term trajectory here remains intact, even as volatility continues to test conviction along the way. Broader adoption beyond today's institutional base is simply a matter of the infrastructure, and the trust in it, continuing to build.