Chief Executive's 2026 Policy Address commits to stablecoin trading, tokenised Exchange Fund Bills and CBDC settlement by year-end

The rule in brief

The Chief Executive delivered the 2026 Policy Address on 16 September 2026. Chapter 3, on Hong Kong as an international financial centre, sets out these digital-asset measures:

• The government will promote “the trading of regulated stablecoins on licensed virtual-asset trading platforms and their use in the settlement of tokenised money market funds” (para 49).
• The SFC will improve the framework for tokenised investment products so that tokenised gold and other suitable real-world assets can be issued and traded on licensed platforms, and will set specific guidelines for virtual asset service providers (para 49).
• The HKMA plans central bank digital currency (CBDC) settlement and 24/7 operations under EnsembleTX “by around the end of this year”, and more uses for tokenised deposits (para 50), including trade-finance pilots with the Mainland by year-end (para 99).
• The HKMA will test tokenised Exchange Fund Bills by year-end so banks can use more than HK$1.3 trillion of them round the clock for asset and liability management (para 35).
• CMU OmniClear will set up a digital asset platform this year for issuing and settling digital bonds, and government digital bond issuance becomes regular, with settlement in digital currencies (para 35).
• The SFC will start its digital-asset custody surveillance system in the second half of 2026 (para 50).

Implications

Most of these are commitments with dates, not rules. The stablecoin measure builds on the SFC and HKMA circulars of May 2026, which already let licensed platforms list licensed stablecoins without prior approval. What is new is the named use: settling tokenised money market funds. Hong Kong’s retail tokenised money market fund, ChinaAMC’s, takes subscriptions in fiat today, so this would move its cash leg on-chain.

The HKMA measures run on infrastructure it controls: EnsembleTX for tokenised deposits and CBDC, and CMU OmniClear for bonds and Exchange Fund Bills. Tokenised Exchange Fund Bills matter to banks because they hold them for liquidity; a token that moves outside RTGS hours would let a bank use that liquidity at weekends. The address does not say how the two tracks connect, or whether a stablecoin could settle against an asset on HKMA infrastructure.

For Ethereum

The first licensed Hong Kong dollar stablecoin in circulation, Anchorpoint’s HKDAP, is an ERC-20 on Ethereum mainnet with transfers limited to whitelisted wallets. Stablecoin settlement of tokenised funds would therefore start on Ethereum unless HSBC, the other licensee, issues on a different chain. The HKMA’s own rails do not name their ledger technology, and none of the measures on those rails mention public chains.

Elsewhere in Asia

Singapore is writing its stablecoin framework into law and supports settlement in both tokenised bank liabilities and stablecoins through BLOOM. India’s Demat 2.0 settles tokenised bonds only in wholesale CBDC.

What to watch

CMU OmniClear’s platform and the first tokenised Exchange Fund Bill tests, both due by the end of 2026; CBDC settlement on EnsembleTX around year-end; the SFC’s guidance for tokenised gold; and the first tokenised fund subscription paid in a licensed stablecoin.