Standard Chartered CEO: All Money Will Go Digital, All Transactions On Blockchain

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters expects every transaction to one day run on blockchain, calling it a “complete rewiring” of global finance.

Standard Chartered CEO Believes Blockchain Will Host All Money Eventually

As reported by CNBC, Bill Winters talked about the future of finance and Hong Kong’s role in the global digital assets space at a Hong Kong FinTech Week panel on Monday. “Our belief, which I think is shared by the leadership of Hong Kong, is that pretty much all transactions will settle on blockchains eventually, and that all money will be digital,” said the Standard Chartered CEO.

The comment comes as there has been a push toward digital ledger tokenization around the world. Payments giant SWIFT, for example, is developing a blockchain-based ledger, as announced in September.

Tokenization of an asset creates a digital copy of it that can be traded on the blockchain. Last year, Hong Kong launched a project to test the application of tokenization in real-life business scenarios, with Standard Chartered as a participant.

Standard Chartered is a British bank that operates around the world, including Hong Kong. The institution, designated as a Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), has been growing its presence in the digital assets space recently.

Earlier this year, the bank became the first of its stature to launch a spot Bitcoin and Ethereum trading desk for institutional clients. It has also formed a joint venture with Animoca Brands and Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) to obtain a stablecoin license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).

Stablecoins represent a prominent example of tokenization, acting as blockchain counterparts to fiat currencies. Standard Chartered is planning to launch an asset of this kind based on the Hong Kong Dollar (HKD).

The current tokenized assets may only be the beginning if the prediction from the bank’s CEO about all money eventually becoming digital is to go by. “Think about what that means: a complete rewiring of the financial system,” noted Winters.

Bitcoin Has Taken A 3% Hit During The Past Day

Bitcoin has kicked off the new week with another retrace as its price is back down to the $107,500 mark. The chart below shows how the cryptocurrency’s trend has looked recently.

Despite the recent bearish wave, however, Bitcoin is still outperforming in 2024 in terms of the spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows. As CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn has pointed out in an X post, 2025 is ahead of 2024 in year-to-date inflows.

At this point last year, US Bitcoin spot ETFs registered around $22.5 billion in cumulative inflows. The same metric for 2025 is now sitting at $25.18 billion.