Standard Chartered's Pierre Mengal Maps GCNA Digital Asset Commercialisation

Standard Chartered‘s Pierre Mengal, interim regional head for Greater China and North Asia (GCNA) securities services, argues that the region has moved past the question of whether digital assets have merit and is now focused on where they solve concrete institutional problems. The piece identifies regulation, tokenisation and digital money as the three forces pulling digital assets from experimentation toward commercial scale, and surveys how individual markets in the region are progressing along distinct trajectories.

Hong Kong is characterised as the most mature market, with an ecosystem spanning custody, tokenised funds, digital money and real-world asset applications. Taiwan is at an inflection point following the passage of its Virtual Asset Services Act, though implementation rules around tokenised securities and stablecoins, specifically covering ownership, settlement, accounting and taxation, still need to be settled before its capital-market infrastructure can fully support institutional innovation. Mainland China remains focused on controlled, policy-led distributed ledger technology and digital currency within clear boundaries around virtual assets, while South Korea and Japan continue developing custody, trading and investor protection frameworks.

Mengal’s central argument is that because no single regional template will emerge, connectivity, interoperability and sustained regulatory dialogue become the load-bearing elements. On tokenisation specifically, the piece points to settlement-cycle compression, fragmented record consolidation, distribution reach and collateral mobility as the friction points where the technology is most likely to create durable value. Legal certainty around ownership, settlement finality, insolvency and enforceability is flagged as a prerequisite for institutional confidence rather than an optional refinement.