The dominant signal in this period is institutional, not regulatory. Three appointments at the BIS and adjacent bodies will shape cross-border tokenisation governance for the next three to five years.

• Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli appointed Head of the BIS Innovation Hub (announced 25 Nov 2025, started 1 Mar 2026). Joins from the IMF where he was Assistant Director, Payments, Currencies and Infrastructure. Read the IMF remit as a near-perfect overlap with the cross-border tokenisation portfolio he now runs (Project Agorá, post-mBridge governance, Mariana, Pyxtrial).
  • The lens is institutional adoption signal: the Hub leadership transition lands immediately after mBridge graduated and during a period when cross-border tokenisation work is shifting from pilot to operating consortium. Mancini-Griffoli's published view on CBDC public-private division will be worth tracking as a leading indicator for Hub pilot architecture.
• Hyun Song Shin appointed Governor of the Bank of Korea (nominated 22 Mar 2026, confirmed 16 Apr 2026). Steps back from BIS duties immediately. Frank Smets serves as Acting Head of the BIS Monetary and Economic Department pending Hélène Rey's start in September 2026.
  • Stablecoin race lens: Korea is mid-build of Phase 2 of its digital-asset framework (Digital Asset Basic Act including stablecoin issuance), and Shin moves from framing the architecture at BIS to operating one node within it.
  • Cross-border lens: much of the institutional vocabulary around "unified ledger" tokenised settlement traces to Shin's BIS speeches (see "Money as a coordination device", 27 Jan 2026; "Post-GFC rewiring of the global financial system", 20 Feb 2026), which now feeds Korean policy.
• Ben Gully appointed Secretary General of the Basel Committee (announced 17 Mar 2026, starts August 2026). From OSFI Canada. The Secretary General controls Secretariat agenda and pace, so this is the single most important appointment for the targeted review of SCO60 now being expedited per GHOS endorsement.

Two BIS speeches also matter for tokenisation framing:

• 20 Apr 2026. Pablo Hernández de Cos, "Stablecoins: framing the debate", at a Bank of Japan seminar in Tokyo.
  • Bilateral lens: this came one day before Hernández de Cos met FSA Minister Katayama in Tokyo. The speech notice is the only ingested record; the substantive text needs to be fetched. Worth flagging because Hernández de Cos has been the General Manager driving the BIS framing of digital money since taking over from Carstens, and a Tokyo set-piece on stablecoins lands in the jurisdiction with the cleanest stablecoin regime in APAC. Stablecoin race lens applies.
• 12 Nov 2025. Andréa Maechler, "How deposits can harness tokenisation", at the Singapore Fintech Festival. Maechler was Acting Head of the BIS Innovation Hub at the time. Substantive text not in raw entries, but the title alone is a deliberate stake in the ground for tokenised deposits as the central vector for institutional tokenisation, which is consistent with the broader BIS line.

Standard-setting activity worth noting:

• 9 Mar 2026. GHOS endorses targeted reviews of the cryptoasset standard (SCO60) and the G-SIB framework. Expedited per the November 2025 Basel Committee meeting. The targeted review will determine the prudential capital treatment of bank tokenised-asset exposures for the next cycle.
  • Asset-class scope lens: whether the Group 1a / Group 2 boundary moves at all, and where, will determine which tokenised products are economically holdable on bank balance sheets.
• 16 Apr 2026. CPMI-IOSCO assess UK PFMI implementation for systemic payment systems and CSDs/SSSs (status as of September 2023). The lag is real, which is itself worth noting for any tokenised CSD or SSS work seeking PFMI equivalence in this cycle.

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The single biggest tokenisation move of the period is here.

• 20 Apr 2026. SFC unveils new regulatory framework to allow secondary trading of tokenised SFC-authorised investment products.
  • Asset-class scope lens: until now, tokenised SFC-authorised funds in HK could be issued and primary-distributed but not freely traded on a secondary venue. The new framework opens that gate inside the existing licensing perimeter, which is what unlocks treasury-style use cases for HK-authorised tokenised funds and brings tokenised-MMF-style products into a usable wrapper for HK institutional allocators.
  • Jurisdictional positioning lens: this puts HK ahead of Singapore on production-grade secondary-market plumbing for tokenised authorised funds, even as Singapore retains the lead on stablecoin-issuer ergonomics under the SCS framework. The press release body was not in the ingested record; the headline framing is therefore single-sourced and the operational detail (which products, which venues, which intermediary licence categories) remains to be confirmed.
• 22 Apr 2026. SFC hosts IOSCO Committee 2 meeting in Hong Kong on secondary market.
  • Cross-border lens: Committee 2 is the IOSCO forum for secondary-market regulation and the meeting being hosted by SFC days after the secondary-trading framework drop is unlikely to be coincidence. Whether the substantive agenda touched tokenised secondary markets specifically is not stated.
• 20 Apr 2026. Eric Yip keynote at Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2026. 24 Apr 2026, Kelvin Wong keynote at Deloitte's Hong Kong CFO Forum. Both speech bodies were not in the ingested record. Worth tracking as the SFC's set-piece public framing immediately after the secondary-trading framework, in two different audiences (Web3-native vs corporate CFO).

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One operational pilot, one institutional bilateral, and a stack of consultation-track items.

• 20 Apr 2026. Nomura, Mizuho, JSCC and Digital Asset announce a tokenised JGB collateral trial on the Canton Network.
  • Institutional adoption signal: this is operational rather than symbolic. Two of the four (Nomura, Mizuho) are previously announced FSA Japan PIP sandbox participants, so the trial is graduating from sandbox to public announcement. JSCC's involvement is the part to read carefully. A tokenised collateral pilot involving the CCP is structurally a different exercise from a tokenised repo pilot among megabanks, because the CCP is at minimum thinking through how a tokenised JGB sits inside its margin and default-management framework.
  • Asset-class scope lens: this is tokenised collateral specifically (see the new tokenised collateral theme page), not tokenised secondary trading. Open question: structure of the cash leg (Progmat trust-issued stablecoin, tokenised deposit, off-chain settlement) is not specified.
• 21 Apr 2026. FSA Minister Katayama meets Hernández de Cos in Tokyo. Adjacent to the BIS GM stablecoins speech at BoJ the day before.
  • Cross-border lens: Japan is functioning as the venue where international standard-setters test positions before publication.
• 10 Apr 2026. FSA publishes draft revisions to the Corporate Governance Code for public consultation. The third (27 Mar) and second (19 Feb) Expert Panel meetings preceded this. The scope is broader than tokenisation but the CGC reaches into how listed issuers govern digital-asset and tokenisation programmes, which is enough to track.
• 3 Mar 2026. AI Discussion Paper Version 1.1.
  • Agentic commerce lens: whether the paper substantively addresses AI agents holding or moving regulated digital money in Japan would be a material signal for the JPYC-and-Progmat stack. The headline alone is silent; the body needs to be sourced.

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• BIS Innovation Hub leadership transition. Mancini-Griffoli's start at the Hub on 1 March 2026 is the type of appointment that quietly seeds a new generation of pilot mandates. Six to twelve months out, the Hub will be staffing project teams in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, London, Stockholm, Frankfurt and Toronto centres, and the published research on Project Agorá and post-mBridge governance will signal which centres are most active. Watch the Hub's Singapore Fintech Festival appearances in November 2026 as the natural marker.
• Hong Kong SFC secondary-trading framework. The framework will require licensed intermediaries to handle tokenised SFC-authorised investment products in a secondary capacity. Expect SFC-licensed brokerages, custodians and platform operators to staff up product and operations roles to handle the new wrapper.
• Bank of Korea governorship change. Korean stablecoin and tokenised-deposit work will accelerate. Korean megabanks (KB, Shinhan, Hana, Woori) and the major Korean digital-asset infrastructure operators are the natural recipients of new mandates. Watch the Korean two-phase digital-asset framework legislative cadence as the operational signal.
• Japanese megabank tokenisation desks. The Nomura-Mizuho-JSCC trial confirms the Tokyo megabank desks are ahead of the public picture on operational tokenisation. JSCC's involvement specifically suggests a CCP-side tokenisation operations function is in build.
• Ben Gully (incoming Basel Committee Secretary General). Career signal for institutional readers: the SCO60 targeted review will redraw the prudential perimeter for bank tokenised-asset holdings. National supervisor-side teams (HKMA, MAS, FSA, FCA, OSFI, OCC) will need to staff up to translate the targeted review into national rule text. This is exactly the role TradFi prudential specialists tend to occupy.

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A working list of questions practitioners should be putting to counterparts, regulators and internal sponsors this fortnight. Surfaced to outputs/_questions.md for triage.

• What does Pablo Hernández de Cos's "Stablecoins: framing the debate" (BoJ Tokyo, 20 Apr 2026) actually argue, and which arms of the BIS framing on stablecoins should we be pricing into our own product roadmap?
• How does Andréa Maechler's "How deposits can harness tokenisation" (Singapore Fintech Festival, 12 Nov 2025) sequence tokenised deposits versus stablecoins as the institutional vector, and where does that leave our own deposit-token build?
• Which products, which venues and which intermediary licence categories will the SFC HK secondary-trading framework actually cover, and how soon should we be wiring product and ops to it?
• Does the JSCC tokenised JGB collateral trial settle the cash leg via Progmat trust-issued stablecoins, a tokenised deposit, or off-chain, and what does the chosen leg signal about the JPY tokenised-money stack?
• Is the JSCC trial structured as bilateral repo first or directly CCP-cleared, and what does that tell us about how Tokyo plans to graduate tokenised collateral into mainstream margin operations?
• Will the Basel Committee's SCO60 targeted review move the Group 1a / Group 2 boundary or only recalibrate inside it, and how should our balance-sheet plan flex for either outcome?
• What does Mancini-Griffoli's arrival at the BIS Innovation Hub signal for the cross-border tokenisation portfolio post-mBridge, and which Hub centre should we be embedded with?
• Did the IOSCO Committee 2 meeting hosted by SFC HK substantively touch tokenised secondary markets, or did it stay on conventional FMI questions, and how do we get the readout?
• Does the FSA AI Discussion Paper Version 1.1 give AI agents a route to hold regulated digital money in Japan, and how should we be engaging FSA on the question before it hardens?
• Where is the HKMA on Project Ensemble milestones and the Stablecoins Ordinance licensing queue, and what should we be tracking in the supervisory dialogue while the public update is overdue?