Week ending 28 April 2026

The dominant signal in this period is institutional rather than regulatory. Three appointments at the BIS and adjacent bodies look set to shape cross-border tokenisation governance for the next three to five years.

• Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli was appointed Head of the BIS Innovation Hub (announced 25 Nov 2025, started 1 Mar 2026). He joins from the IMF, where he was Assistant Director, Payments, Currencies and Infrastructure, a remit that reads as a near-perfect overlap with the cross-border tokenisation portfolio he now runs (Project Agorá, post-mBridge governance, Mariana, Pyxtrial).
  • The lens is institutional adoption signal: the Hub leadership transition lands immediately after mBridge graduated and during a period when cross-border tokenisation work is shifting from pilot to operating consortium. Mancini-Griffoli's published view on the CBDC public-private division will be worth tracking as a leading indicator for Hub pilot architecture.
• Hyun Song Shin was appointed Governor of the Bank of Korea (nominated 22 Mar 2026, confirmed 16 Apr 2026). He steps back from BIS duties immediately, and Frank Smets serves as Acting Head of the BIS Monetary and Economic Department pending Hélène Rey's start in September 2026.
  • Stablecoin race lens: Korea is mid-build of Phase 2 of its digital-asset framework (Digital Asset Basic Act including stablecoin issuance), and Shin moves from framing the architecture at BIS to operating one node within it.
  • Cross-border lens: much of the institutional vocabulary around "unified ledger" tokenised settlement traces to Shin's BIS speeches (see "Money as a coordination device", 27 Jan 2026; "Post-GFC rewiring of the global financial system", 20 Feb 2026), and that framing now travels with him into Korean policy.
• Ben Gully was appointed Secretary General of the Basel Committee (announced 17 Mar 2026, starts August 2026). He joins from OSFI Canada. The Secretary General controls Secretariat agenda and pace, which makes this arguably the single most important appointment for the targeted review of SCO60 now being expedited per GHOS endorsement.

Two BIS speeches also matter for tokenisation framing:

• 20 Apr 2026. Pablo Hernández de Cos delivered "Stablecoins: framing the debate" at a Bank of Japan seminar in Tokyo.
  • Bilateral lens: the speech came one day before Hernández de Cos met FSA Minister Katayama in Tokyo. Only the speech notice was available at the time of writing; the substantive text remains to be read. It is worth flagging because Hernández de Cos has been the General Manager driving the BIS framing of digital money since taking over from Carstens, and a Tokyo set-piece on stablecoins lands in the jurisdiction with the cleanest stablecoin regime in APAC, which puts the stablecoin race lens squarely in play.
• 12 Nov 2025. Andréa Maechler delivered "How deposits can harness tokenisation" at the Singapore Fintech Festival, while serving as Acting Head of the BIS Innovation Hub. The substantive text was not available at the time of writing, but the title alone reads as a deliberate stake in the ground for tokenised deposits as the central vector for institutional tokenisation, consistent with the broader BIS line.

Standard-setting activity worth noting:

• 9 Mar 2026. GHOS endorses targeted reviews of the cryptoasset standard (SCO60) and the G-SIB framework, expedited per the November 2025 Basel Committee meeting. The targeted review will determine the prudential capital treatment of bank tokenised-asset exposures for the next cycle.
  • Asset-class scope lens: whether the Group 1a / Group 2 boundary moves at all, and where, will determine which tokenised products are economically holdable on bank balance sheets.
• 16 Apr 2026. CPMI-IOSCO assess UK PFMI implementation for systemic payment systems and CSDs/SSSs (status as of September 2023). The lag is real, and worth noting for any tokenised CSD or SSS work seeking PFMI equivalence in this cycle.

The single biggest tokenisation move of the period sits here.

• 20 Apr 2026. SFC unveils a new regulatory framework to allow secondary trading of tokenised SFC-authorised investment products.
  • Asset-class scope lens: until now, tokenised SFC-authorised funds in HK could be issued and primary-distributed but not freely traded on a secondary venue. The new framework opens that gate inside the existing licensing perimeter, which is what unlocks treasury-style use cases for HK-authorised tokenised funds and brings tokenised-MMF-style products into a usable wrapper for HK institutional allocators.
  • Jurisdictional positioning lens: this appears to put HK ahead of Singapore on production-grade secondary-market plumbing for tokenised authorised funds, even as Singapore retains the lead on stablecoin-issuer ergonomics under the SCS framework. The press release body was not available at the time of writing; the headline framing is therefore single-sourced, and the operational detail (which products, which venues, which intermediary licence categories) remains to be confirmed.
• 22 Apr 2026. SFC hosts IOSCO Committee 2 meeting in Hong Kong on secondary market.
  • Cross-border lens: Committee 2 is the IOSCO forum for secondary-market regulation, and the meeting being hosted by the SFC days after the secondary-trading framework drop is unlikely to be coincidence. Whether the substantive agenda touched tokenised secondary markets specifically is not stated.
• 20 Apr 2026. Eric Yip delivered a keynote at Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2026, and on 24 Apr 2026 Kelvin Wong delivered a keynote at Deloitte's Hong Kong CFO Forum. Neither speech body was available at the time of writing. Both are worth tracking as the SFC's set-piece public framing immediately after the secondary-trading framework, delivered to two different audiences (Web3-native versus corporate CFO).

The period delivered one operational pilot, one institutional bilateral, and a stack of consultation-track items.

• 20 Apr 2026. Nomura, Mizuho, JSCC and Digital Asset announce a tokenised JGB collateral trial on the Canton Network.
  • Institutional adoption signal: this is operational rather than symbolic. Two of the four (Nomura, Mizuho) are previously announced FSA Japan PIP sandbox participants, so the trial is graduating from sandbox to public announcement. JSCC's involvement is the part to read carefully. A tokenised collateral pilot involving the CCP is structurally a different exercise from a tokenised repo pilot among megabanks, because the CCP is at minimum thinking through how a tokenised JGB sits inside its margin and default-management framework.
  • Asset-class scope lens: this is tokenised collateral specifically (see the new tokenised collateral theme page), not tokenised secondary trading. The open question is the structure of the cash leg (Progmat trust-issued stablecoin, tokenised deposit, off-chain settlement), which is not specified.
• 21 Apr 2026. FSA Minister Katayama meets Hernández de Cos in Tokyo. The meeting sits adjacent to the BIS General Manager's stablecoins speech at the BoJ the day before.
  • Cross-border lens: Japan appears to be functioning as the venue where international standard-setters test positions before publication.
• 10 Apr 2026. FSA publishes draft revisions to the Corporate Governance Code for public consultation. The third (27 Mar) and second (19 Feb) Expert Panel meetings preceded this. The scope is broader than tokenisation, but the CGC reaches into how listed issuers govern digital-asset and tokenisation programmes, which is enough to track.
• 3 Mar 2026. AI Discussion Paper Version 1.1.
  • Agentic commerce lens: whether the paper substantively addresses AI agents holding or moving regulated digital money in Japan would be a material signal for the JPYC-and-Progmat stack. The headline alone is silent on the question; the paper itself remains to be read.

• BIS Innovation Hub leadership transition. Mancini-Griffoli's start at the Hub on 1 March 2026 is the type of appointment that tends to quietly seed a new generation of pilot mandates. Six to twelve months out, the Hub will likely be staffing project teams in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, London, Stockholm, Frankfurt and Toronto centres, and the published research on Project Agorá and post-mBridge governance will signal which centres are most active. The Hub's Singapore Fintech Festival appearances in November 2026 are the natural marker to watch.
• Hong Kong SFC secondary-trading framework. The framework will require licensed intermediaries to handle tokenised SFC-authorised investment products in a secondary capacity. SFC-licensed brokerages, custodians and platform operators are likely to staff up product and operations roles to handle the new wrapper.
• Bank of Korea governorship change. Korean stablecoin and tokenised-deposit work looks set to accelerate. Korean megabanks (KB, Shinhan, Hana, Woori) and the major Korean digital-asset infrastructure operators are the natural recipients of new mandates, and the Korean two-phase digital-asset framework's legislative cadence is the operational signal to watch.
• Japanese megabank tokenisation desks. The Nomura-Mizuho-JSCC trial suggests the Tokyo megabank desks are ahead of the public picture on operational tokenisation, and JSCC's involvement specifically suggests a CCP-side tokenisation operations function is in build.
• Ben Gully (incoming Basel Committee Secretary General). The career signal for institutional readers is that the SCO60 targeted review is set to redraw the prudential perimeter for bank tokenised-asset holdings. National supervisor-side teams (HKMA, MAS, FSA, FCA, OSFI, OCC) will need to staff up to translate the targeted review into national rule text, which is exactly the type of role TradFi prudential specialists tend to occupy.

A working list of questions practitioners should be putting to counterparts, regulators and internal sponsors this fortnight.

• What does Pablo Hernández de Cos's "Stablecoins: framing the debate" (BoJ Tokyo, 20 Apr 2026) actually argue, and which arms of the BIS framing on stablecoins belong in a product roadmap's pricing assumptions?
• How does Andréa Maechler's "How deposits can harness tokenisation" (Singapore Fintech Festival, 12 Nov 2025) sequence tokenised deposits versus stablecoins as the institutional vector, and where does that sequencing leave a bank's own deposit-token build?
• Which products, which venues and which intermediary licence categories will the SFC HK secondary-trading framework actually cover, and how soon should product and operations teams be wiring to it?
• Does the JSCC tokenised JGB collateral trial settle the cash leg via Progmat trust-issued stablecoins, a tokenised deposit, or off-chain, and what does the chosen leg signal about the JPY tokenised-money stack?
• Is the JSCC trial structured as bilateral repo first or directly CCP-cleared, and what does that say about how Tokyo plans to graduate tokenised collateral into mainstream margin operations?
• Will the Basel Committee's SCO60 targeted review move the Group 1a / Group 2 boundary or only recalibrate inside it, and how should a bank's balance-sheet plan flex for either outcome?
• What does Mancini-Griffoli's arrival at the BIS Innovation Hub signal for the cross-border tokenisation portfolio post-mBridge, and which Hub centre is the one to be embedded with?
• Did the IOSCO Committee 2 meeting hosted by SFC HK substantively touch tokenised secondary markets, or did it stay on conventional FMI questions, and where would the readout surface?
• Does the FSA AI Discussion Paper Version 1.1 give AI agents a route to hold regulated digital money in Japan, and how should an issuer be engaging the FSA on the question before it hardens?
• Where is the HKMA on Project Ensemble milestones and the Stablecoins Ordinance licensing queue, and what is worth tracking in the supervisory dialogue while the public update is overdue?