On August 7, 2025, during the ANCHOR Web3.0 Future Summit, Hong Kong officially launched the world's first Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization registry platform. This was a major milestone for Hong Kong's financial technology sector, signaling its shift from being a follower to a leader in the global digital finance space.
The Platform's Core Value and Web3 Standards
The platform aims to solve the industry pain points of fragmented regulation and a lack of transparency that have long plagued RWA tokenization. By creating a standardized framework for asset encoding, classification, and evaluation, it makes the tokenization process for traditional assets like real estate and gold more secure, efficient, and trustworthy.
The Web3 standards released alongside the platform provide a clear roadmap for the industry. These standards challenge the simplistic notion that "anything can be tokenized" and underscore the necessity of building a responsible and sustainable virtual asset market.
Consensus Between Government and Industry Giants: Expanding and Regulating
Speeches at the summit clearly conveyed the Hong Kong SAR government's strong support for RWA tokenization. Christopher Hui Ching-yu, the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, stated that Hong Kong plans to expand the range of tokenized assets to include precious metals, base metals, and renewable energy to meet diverse market demands.
The government recognizes that opportunities come with challenges and is actively refining a comprehensive regulatory framework to cover all market participants, including virtual asset exchanges and stablecoin issuers. The active participation of global financial giants like Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and Ant Group is also injecting strong momentum into Hong Kong's development. Speeches by Leung Chun-ying and Jonathan Choi Koon-shum confirmed Hong Kong's ambition to set new financial rules in the global Web3.0 era.
First-Mover Advantage and Future Outlook
Before launching the registry platform, Hong Kong had already gained valuable experience through pilot projects, such as HSBC's blockchain settlement service and China Asset Management (Hong Kong)'s retail tokenized money market fund. These early initiatives laid a solid foundation for Hong Kong's RWA ecosystem.
Hui cited data projecting that global tokenized fund assets under management could reach $600 billion by 2030. Hong Kong's registry platform and regulatory framework are designed to seize this historic opportunity, turning RWA and Web3 from concepts into reality and shaping a more interconnected, efficient, and inclusive future for the global financial ecosystem.
