SFC Chief Says Banks Must Adopt Blockchain to “Survive and Thrive” in 24/7 Markets - Crypto Economy

TL;DR:

• Leung said banks and asset managers must adopt blockchain or fall behind; T+1 and extended hours will not satisfy 24/7 mobile investors.
• She pitched tokenisation programmability to upgrade fractionalisation, clearing and settlement, and urged bridging TradFi trust with DeFi efficiency for deeper liquidity globally.
• She cited Hong Kong’s BTC and ETH ETFs, $94B inflows into markets in 2025 and a 90% turnover jump, while warning about debt and AI-return risks.

Hong Kong’s securities regulator is pressing banks and asset managers to accelerate blockchain adoption, arguing that today’s market upgrades will not satisfy a 24/7 investor culture. In a keynote at the ASIFMA EU-Asia Financial Services Dialogue, SFC CEO Julia Leung said exchanges extending trading hours and shifting to T+1 are steps forward, but incremental change will not keep pace with digital-native expectations. She cited millennials and Gen Z spending five to six hours daily on mobile phones and demanding instant execution, then called for fundamental upgrades in how products are fractionalised, cleared, and settled globally.

Tokenisation as the Path to 24/7 Markets

Leung positioned distributed ledger technology and tokenisation as a “credible pathway” because programmability can streamline post-trade workflows and expand product design. In her framing, tokenisation turns clearing and settlement into software, enabling more efficient processing while supporting tokenised products “from bonds and funds to gold and beyond.” She also urged firms to bridge the trust of traditional finance with the efficiency of decentralised finance, arguing the convergence could unlock deeper liquidity, broader ownership, and more inclusive market access. Her message to banks, asset managers, and infrastructure operators: survive and thrive in an increasingly technology-driven landscape.


The remarks reinforce Hong Kong’s push to position itself as a regulated digital-asset hub, pointing to the city’s approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in 2024 and an expanding virtual-asset trading platform licensing regime. Leung noted that capital is already rotating toward Asia at pace, citing $94 billion of inflows into Asian markets in 2025, up 74% year over year. She also said Hong Kong’s average daily stock turnover rose 90% after microstructure reforms, and flagged a pipeline of non-Chinese companies planning Hong Kong listings, aided by streamlined frameworks for stocks, REITs, and ETFs.

Leung paired the digital push with a broader risk warning, saying the current “everything rally” can mask fundamental global shifts. She highlighted fiscal profligacy and rising debt concerns as structural headwinds, while questioning how companies will translate “massive AI investment into shareholder returns.” Her caution was to avoid mistaking appearance for reality or contingency for continuity, even as markets chase growth narratives. The message for financial institutions is to treat tokenisation as long-term infrastructure, not a cyclical trade, and to upgrade governance, controls, and settlement design for a 24/7 world before the next volatility regime.