Money is moving on-chain faster than investment products are following it. Stablecoins can already travel across wallets and borders, yet holders seeking regulated exposure to funds, credit, gold or equities still encounter a system built around local accounts, currencies, intermediaries and market hours.
Henry Zhang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DigiFT, is working on that missing investment route. Established in Singapore in 2021, the firm provides regulated infrastructure for tokenised assets, with a focus on putting on-chain liquidity to work. It operates under Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Capital Markets Services (CMS) and Recognised Market Operator (RMO) permissions, while its Hong Kong entity holds Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) Type 1 and Type 4 licences.
In this conversation with Hubbis, Zhang separates the mechanics of tokenisation from the risk and return of the investment underneath. He discusses the shift from placing assets on-chain to using them as collateral and, later, connecting them with artificial intelligence (AI). He also considers the response from asset managers and private banks, DigiFT’s priorities in Asia and the banking career that led him to build a company of his own.
Key Takeaways
- DigiFT focuses on investment rather than payments: The platform is intended to give stablecoin and other on-chain liquidity access to regulated yield-bearing assets.
- Tokenisation is only the first stage: Zhang describes a progression from moving assets on-chain, to making them usable within other financial applications, and then connecting them with AI.
- The underlying investment does not become different: Tokenisation can alter how an asset is issued, held, transferred, settled and used, but it does not by itself change the asset’s risk-return profile.
- Institutional participation is already broadening: DigiFT has worked with asset managers, banks and investment groups including UBS, Invesco, Wellington Management, BNY, Franklin Templeton, DBS, OCBC, CMB International, Taikang Asset Management (Hong Kong), SBI and Hines.
- Access is the central commercial argument: Asset managers can reach eligible investors beyond their home markets, while allocators can gain exposure across asset classes, geographies, currencies and time zones.
- Private banks cannot treat on-chain wealth as a payment question alone: As more clients hold tokenised money, wealth managers will need a credible route from on-chain cash into suitable investments.
- DigiFT’s priorities are wider, deeper and smarter: It plans to add more assets, expand their use as collateral and other applications, and prepare its architecture for agent-led finance.
- DigiFT’s 24/7 liquidity facility moves the token, not the underlying asset’s valuation or redemption cycle.
- Zhang identified Web3 early as the defining finance-and-technology cycle of this era, a conviction shaped by his own experience building internet-era banking products before moving from senior banking roles into entrepreneurship.
Building an Investment Layer for On-Chain Money
Zhang draws a firm line between payments and investment. DigiFT combines regulated capital-markets infrastructure with decentralised finance (DeFi), concentrating on what happens after money reaches a wallet rather than on the payment itself. He calls it a digital-asset wealth platform, but prefers a more precise description of the job it is meant to do.
People will always need to put surplus money to work, Zhang argues; the technology used to do it changes in cycles. He sees Web3 as the next shift, extending an internet built to carry information into networks that can also record and transfer claims on value.
“Finance is comprehensive, so we cannot do everything,” Zhang says. “We chose the asset side and the capital-markets side. What we are building is an investment layer – a legitimate yield layer – for stablecoin liquidity.”
He reduces the evolution of money to three forms. The first is paper cash, now a small part of most portfolios. The second is electronic money held within the established banking system. The third is tokenised money held on-chain, most visibly through stablecoins. DigiFT is designed for investors who do not want to convert that third form back into fiat money before allocating it.
Bringing Real-World Assets On-Chain
Zhang divides the market’s development into three phases. The first is the process of bringing real-world assets (RWA) on-chain and allowing eligible investors to subscribe, hold and, where facilities exist, trade them in tokenised form. He calls this RWA 1.0.
The terminology still amuses a career banker. “Whoever popularised RWA as real-world assets probably did not come from a bank,” he says. “In banking, RWA has always meant risk-weighted assets. But this is the language the market has chosen.”
DigiFT reports that the value of tokenised assets it has launched had passed USD400 million as at 26 August 2026; industry totals can vary with the methodology used. Its relationships include UBS Asset Management’s uMINT money-market fund token, Invesco’s iSNR senior-loan strategy, Wellington Management’s ULTRA fixed-income strategy, BNY-linked equity exposure and Franklin Templeton’s Benji Technology Platform. It has also worked with DBS, CMB International Asset Management, Taikang Asset Management (Hong Kong) and Hines. On 1 September 2026, DigiFT and KGI also announced the KGI Taiwan TOP 50 Fund Token (kTW50), providing on-chain access to a Taiwan large-cap equity fund strategy managed by KGI Securities Investment Trust.
In July 2026, DigiFT and SBI Global Asset Management launched the SBI Japan High Dividend Equity Strategy Token (JX) on Solana. The product gives eligible accredited and institutional investors on-chain exposure to a Japanese high-dividend equity strategy managed by SBI Asset Management. Zhang uses it as a practical example of tokenisation widening access to a major market that can still be operationally awkward for overseas investors.
What Tokenisation Changes and What It Does Not
For asset managers, the attraction is distribution. A provider wants to reach more suitable investors and grow assets under management (AUM). Moving an interest on-chain can extend that reach, but Zhang is careful about the limits of the technology.
“Tokenisation does not change the risk and return of the underlying asset,” he says. “A money-market fund is still a money-market fund, and a stock is still a stock. What changes is accessibility and usability.”
Usability covers the methods of subscription, holding, transfer and settlement, as well as links with approved on-chain applications. Legal title is a separate question. Investor rights still depend on the product documents, registers, custody arrangements and governing law.
Zhang compares this with stablecoins, which can provide another route to US dollar payments and allocation in markets with limited financial infrastructure. Tokenised funds apply similar logic to the asset side. DigiFT connects the product, regulated distribution process and on-chain investor, while asset managers, banks, custodians and advisers retain their responsibilities for governance, suitability, valuation, reporting and client assets.
Why Private Wealth Cannot Ignore Tokenised Money
Private banks and traditional wealth managers have approached the market carefully. An institution has to solve the whole client journey, including custody, wallet and key management, product approval, suitability, accounting, operations and liquidity. A technically successful token is only one part of that work.
Two pressures may draw private wealth firms closer. One is the prospect of allocating across asset classes, geographies, currencies and time zones with fewer operational barriers. The other is the changing form of wealth itself. If clients keep more money in stablecoins and investor-controlled wallets, their wealth manager needs a credible way to invest it.
“Today, the client has two options,” Zhang says. “They can convert tokenised money back into fiat and return to the existing financial system, or the assets can also move into token form so that tokenised money and tokenised investments can interact.”
Advice and controls still apply. What changes is the operating route through which an approved allocation is executed. The practical opportunity for private banks lies in serving clients whose liquidity is already on-chain, rather than launching tokens simply to have a tokenised product.
Key Priorities
Zhang groups DigiFT’s priorities for the next 12 to 18 months into three words: wider, deeper and smarter. The first is about range. DigiFT wants to bring more asset managers, markets and investment types on-chain, adding to its US dollar products and work around Japanese assets. Zhang compares the task with stocking a supermarket: there must be enough useful products to attract customers, but the range should respond to what they want.
“Amazon began with books and expanded from there,” he says. “The same applies here. You put the products on the shelf, listen to demand and continue broadening the range.”
The second priority is depth: making tokenised assets useful after they have been acquired. The OCBC-LionGlobal Physical Gold Fund Token (GOLDX), launched in April 2026, has since been deployed as collateral in a compliance-gated lending market. This can make cross-border control and enforcement more transparent, although the legal effect still depends on the product and lending documents. Credit and liquidity risk remain.
By smarter, Zhang means agent-led finance. DigiFT supports non-custodial and self-custody models as well as permitted custodial services. He believes that architecture can help AI progress from analysing a portfolio to carrying out an approved action.
“An AI agent can become a sleepless analyst, able to handle more data than a person,” he says. “But wealth management ultimately requires action: buying or selling something at the right time. That is where on-chain assets and AI can become complementary.”
Into the Future
Capital markets offer enormous choice, but the route to each investment remains stubbornly local. A Hong Kong asset generally requires Hong Kong dollars and local access; a Japanese investment may call for yen and another set of accounts. Settlement conventions vary too, creating friction for investors allocating internationally.
“The allocator should be able to participate in the right opportunity at the right time, regardless of where the asset sits,” Zhang says.
Zhang expects finance to move from online to on-chain. Over the past three decades, the internet took banking and investment services away from counters and paper processes. Web3 adds the ability to transfer a token representing a claim on value, instead of sending only information about that claim. The underlying structure still determines the legal rights, while the record and movement of the interest can become more programmable.
Singapore’s Project Guardian and Guardian Funds Framework, alongside Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble, are building institutional infrastructure around that transition. The SFC reported in April 2026 that 13 tokenised products were publicly offered as at March. Important gaps remain, including inconsistent secondary liquidity and incomplete links across identity, foreign exchange, cash, accounting and reporting.
DigiFT launched a 24/7 real-time liquidity facility for supported RWA products in 2025, but that should not be read as a promise that every tokenised asset has deep, continuous underlying liquidity.
Zhang expects AI and Web3 to meet in practice. AI can improve analysis and decision-making; Web3 can provide the rails for carrying out an authorised decision. If that combination works as intended, investors should find it easier to cross markets without weakening suitability, governance or investor protection.
Getting Personal with Henry Zhang
Zhang was born in Shanghai and studied polymer chemistry at Fudan University, where he completed a Bachelor of Science and later a master’s degree in business. He also attended Harvard Business School.
He joined Citi in China in 1996 and remained with the bank for 18 years, eventually becoming Deputy China CEO. Zhang recalls joining when the operation had roughly 90 employees and watching it expand to around 6,000 as international finance grew across Asia and China.
“I rode the big trend,” he says. “International finance was moving beyond the US and expanding in Asia and China. Choosing the growth part of that trend was very important.”
After working in transaction banking in Singapore, Zhang returned to China at the end of 2000 and became Head of E-commerce at Citi China. He worked on early online-payment infrastructure as PayPal emerged in the US and, later, Taobao introduced its Alipay escrow service. The role allowed him to participate in one technology cycle from inside a bank, first building products and then watching internet finance develop into an industry. He remembers the debate as similar to today’s discussion of Web3: the long-term direction appeared clear, but the timing and immediate applications did not.
Zhang later served as Deputy China CEO at Standard Chartered and Greater China CEO of East West Bank. Public biographies also credit him with work on the world’s first cross-border cash-concentration system and China’s first bilingual online-banking system. Blockchain then presented a choice: remain a banker adopting new technology or leave the established system and build. Preparatory work on DigiFT began in late 2020 before the company was established in 2021.
“I could continue as a banker and watch the industry evolve, or I could be a builder,” he says. “I had built products before; this time, I wanted to build something larger. The choice was the latter.”
Entrepreneurship leaves limited time away from DigiFT, but he preserves space for his family, the gym and running. As a school athlete, he competed over 3,000 and 5,000 metres.
He sees the sport as a lesson in persistence and restraint. “You need to control the pace,” Zhang says. “You cannot be the champion all the way, but you still have to compete and enjoy competing. There is much more skill in running than people sometimes think.”
Fast-moving technology has shifted his reading from books towards articles on Web3, AI and the future of finance, and he describes entrepreneurship as difficult, but already rewarding on personal terms.
“I do not measure the process only by how much I have succeeded,” he says. “I measure it by how much I have developed.”
If he were starting again at 20, Zhang says he would still choose finance, but would commit earlier to the intersection between its enduring principles and the technology reshaping how they are applied. “The fundamentals have to be solid,” he says. “But I would be more passionate about exploring the new way of implementing them – to be the innovator, not simply the observer.”
