During five weeks in the United States, I spent much of my time in New York exploring the intersection of blockchain, finance, and emerging technology. I attended Avalanche Summit, spoke about stablecoins for emerging markets during UN Blockchain Week, and observed how conversations around blockchain were evolving beyond crypto trading.
What interested me most was not which blockchain attracted the most attention. It was a more practical question: what needs to happen before tokenisation becomes a useful financial product rather than another technology demonstration?
For Southeast Asian startups, this distinction matters. The region has entrepreneurs exploring tokenised assets, digital payments, and blockchain infrastructure, but technical feasibility is only one part of building a sustainable business.
Wall Street is exploring a different kind of blockchain market
In March 2026, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), part of Intercontinental Exchange, announced a memorandum of understanding with Securitise to support the development of tokenised securities. Securitise was named the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-native securities for corporate and exchange-traded fund issuers on the planned NYSE-affiliated Digital Trading Platform. The initiative includes work on ownership records, on-chain settlement, and the operational standards needed for tokenised securities. In September 2026, Ava Labs disclosed that the NYSE had spent approximately a year testing Avalanche technology for potential use in tokenised securities infrastructure.
The significance is not simply that a major exchange is exploring blockchain. It is that the conversation is moving into the infrastructure behind securities markets: who records ownership, how transactions settle, which intermediaries are responsible, and how investor protections are maintained.
These are not problems a blockchain can solve on its own. A token representing a financial asset does not automatically confer legally enforceable ownership, make an asset liquid, or remove the need for compliance. That is where many tokenisation pitches need to become more specific. A compelling demonstration is not the same as a commercially viable financial product.
In October 2026, BNY and Citadel Securities completed what BNY described as the first use of tokenised assets on a major tri-party repo platform: a two-year US Treasury note settled within minutes on BNY’s private digital ledger before being used as collateral for overnight financing. For Southeast Asian startups, the signal is clear: the next opportunity lies not in tokenisation hype alone, but in building compliant infrastructure that makes real assets, collateral, and institutional capital move more efficiently.
Also Read: Asia’s US$4T tokenisation boom: Why the region will lead the global financial revolution by 2030
The technology is only one part of the equation
Consider BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known as BUIDL. Launched in 2024 and tokenised through Securitise, the fund expanded to additional blockchain networks, including Avalanche, in November of that year. The expansion demonstrated how a tokenised financial product could be made available across multiple blockchain ecosystems.
Avalanche is also the technology underpinning FIFA’s dedicated blockchain, launched for FIFA Collect in 2025. The platform supports digital collectibles and fan experiences, illustrating a different application from tokenised investment funds. These examples involve different products, users, and business models. They should not be treated as interchangeable proof that every asset or organisation needs its own blockchain.
Instead, they raise useful questions for founders: What does a dedicated network enable that an existing platform cannot? Does moving an asset on-chain improve distribution, settlement, transparency, or user experience? And are those improvements valuable enough for customers to adopt the product? The answers depend on the use case, not the popularity of the underlying technology.
The conversations I joined in New York kept returning to a central question for Southeast Asian founders: how can blockchain move beyond technical demonstrations to solve real financial problems? That is the lesson I would bring back to Southeast Asia: start with the problem, not the token.
Southeast Asia is already exploring the institutional path
The region does not need to wait for New York to invent its tokenisation market.
Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) established Project Guardian to bring policymakers and financial institutions together to explore asset tokenisation. Its work spans tokenised funds, bonds, foreign exchange, and other financial products, with attention to interoperability, custody, settlement, and regulatory requirements. MAS has also reported live implementations emerging from the initiative.
This is an important model because it treats tokenisation as a market-structure challenge, not just a technology rollout. Financial institutions need standards, counterparties, operational processes, and a clear understanding of how a new product fits existing rules.
Also Read: Real world tokenisation fireside chat with Anndy Lian: Unpacking the landscape
The lesson for Southeast Asian founders is that regional opportunities will not be identical across countries. Singapore’s financial-market infrastructure and regulatory initiatives differ from the conditions in Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, or Thailand. A product that works in one jurisdiction may need a different legal structure, distribution model, or compliance approach in another.
The bridge between global infrastructure and local markets
New York gave me a closer view of the institutions and infrastructure providers shaping the next phase of blockchain-based finance. My work across Southeast Asian startup communities has also shown me why international connections matter: local founders may have a strong product idea but need access to technical expertise, distribution partners, capital, or regulatory knowledge to turn it into a viable business. The opportunity is not to import every model developed in the United States. It is to understand what those models solve, then identify which problems are relevant to Southeast Asian customers.
For founders, that means starting with customer needs and working backward toward the technology. For investors and ecosystem builders, it means evaluating tokenisation projects on commercial traction, legal clarity, and the quality of their partnerships, not just the size of the opportunity they claim to address. Tokenisation may reshape parts of financial infrastructure, but the technology itself is not the business model.
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