Digital assets are moving beyond their early association with speculation as financial institutions increasingly explore their use in payments, settlement, investment and market infrastructure, according to Gerald Ang, Standard Chartered Bank’s head of financing and securities services for Malaysia, speaking to delegates at The Asset’s 9th Global Islamic Finance Summit on the accelerating convergence of traditional finance and blockchain-based markets.
“Digital assets are no longer a peripheral experiment,” Ang says. “We are moving towards an environment in which money, financial assets and market infrastructure are increasingly operating on-chain.”
The scale of the shift, Ang argues, is already visible in the data. The stablecoin market expanded from approximately US$205 billion in January 2025 to roughly US$300 billion a year later, reaching close to US$320 billion by February 2026, a rise of about 46%. Stablecoin transaction volumes climbed from US$6 trillion in 2024 to around US$11 trillion in early 2026, a figure, Ang points out, that held even after adjusting for high frequency and bot-driven trading.
Tokenized real-world assets, though smaller, are following a comparable trajectory, growing from about US$15 billion to US$40 billion from January 2025 to January 2026. Ang cites internal Standard Chartered research suggesting the market could reach US$2 trillion by the end of 2028, though he acknowledges such projections depend heavily on the pace of regulatory development.
He is careful to distinguish this trend from cryptocurrency more broadly. “I hope that is no longer the conversation,” he notes, referring to the tendency to equate digital assets commonly with bitcoin and ether. The more significant development, in his view, lies in tokenized funds, bonds, private credit and equities, underpinned by stablecoins and on-chain settlement infrastructure.
Three factors are behind what Ang describes as an inflection point for the digital assets industry: regulation, blockchain technology and institutional investor appetite.
Regulatory frameworks, he says, are gradually taking shape in major markets, a precondition for serious institutional involvement. He points to Bank Negara Malaysia’s Digital Asset Innovation Hub, where three banks are piloting tokenized deposits and stablecoins.
Maturing tech
Blockchain technology itself is maturing, with networks increasingly able to support the throughput, identity verification and compliance controls institutions require.
Institutional investor appetite is also growing for digital assets. Ang, citing a joint survey by EY Parthenon and Coinbase, notes that 84% of institutional investors say that they already use or plan to use stablecoins for payments, collateral or yield, while 72% intend to invest in tokenized real-world assets. “This illustrates a potential flywheel between tokenized money and tokenized real world assets,” he says, describing a dynamic in which growth in one segment reinforces growth in the other.
Furthermore, the potential efficiency gains with reference to cross-border bond settlement are illustrated by Ang, who cites an international investor buying into a Malaysian sukuk through conventional channels typically having to wait two days to settle. “If you have tokenized forms of money,” he points out, “you enable that conversion to be done much faster.”
A live example, Ang describes, is that of Standard Chartered in Hong Kong, where a tokenized money market fund was built for China Asset Management using a “digital twin” structure. “Under this arrangement, the fund continues to operate within established custody and fund servicing structures, alongside a tokenized representation on the digital ledger,” Ang states. “Standard Chartered connects these traditional and digital layers, bringing together custody and trustee services, fund administration and transfer agency with tokenization, digital platform and token custody capabilities. This demonstrates why tokenization is not simply a technology project, but an end-to-end financial services proposition.”
A related structure, which Ang calls collateral mirroring, allows institutions to use the economic value of a fund as collateral without liquidating the underlying position, a mechanism he describes as a way to “create a controlled bridge between traditional finance and digital asset markets”.
Turning to Malaysia specifically, Ang points to an active and evolving regulatory conversation around stablecoins and tokenized real estate, areas where policymakers are still shaping the right framework. Tokenized real estate in particular has drawn strong interest from stakeholders, he says, and work is underway to think through how property records, currently anchored to land office systems in the country, may eventually support fractionalized ownership. Bank Negara is expected to issue a consultation paper setting out what the market will need for tokenized forms of money to develop further.
Ang’s closing remarks struck a wait-and-see tone, though one carried by clear momentum. “The key is to start small, prove value through concrete use cases and scale up,” he highlights. “Tokenization is not an end in itself, its value comes from making financial assets more accessible, useful and efficiently connected across markets.” Regulation, he adds, should remain activity and risk based, applying consistent standards regardless of whether a transaction takes place on traditional or digital infrastructure, an approach he credits Malaysian regulators with already following closely.
The institutions that succeed, Ang concludes, will be those that combine innovation with trust, and global capability with local regulatory expertise – a partnership he describes as well underway in Malaysia’s case.
