Baillie Gifford and HashKey Explore Tokenised Investment Products in Hong Kong
Baillie Gifford is in early talks with HashKey Exchange to bring tokenised investment products to professional investors in Hong Kong, the two firms said on 2 November. The $260bn Edinburgh manager and Hong Kong's first licensed digital asset exchange will explore how a century-old active investor and a regulated crypto platform might work together on investor outreach, product distribution and digital asset management. No product, launch date or committed capital was disclosed.
What have the two firms actually agreed?
Less than the framing suggests. The announcement sets out an exploration, not a live product. HashKey Exchange said it was advancing an existing collaboration with Baillie Gifford, though neither firm detailed earlier milestones, a scope of assets or a timeline. The stated focus is three areas: reaching target investors, distributing products, and managing digital assets. The underlying pitch is tokenisation as a delivery channel, a way for a traditional manager to hand investment products to clients in digital form on regulated infrastructure. For now, that remains a plan on paper.
Why would a 1908 asset manager want a crypto exchange?
Baillie Gifford is one of the oldest names in active management. Founded in Edinburgh in 1908 and owned by 54 partners, it ran about $260bn in assets as at 30 April 2026 and built its reputation on long-term, high-conviction equity investing. It opened a Hong Kong office in 2015 to serve clients across Asia. The appeal of a venue such as HashKey is distribution: a regulated, digital route to professional investors in a market the firm has named as a priority for its tokenisation plans.
Hasn't Baillie Gifford already launched a tokenised fund?
It has, which is the context the announcement leaves out. In July 2026 the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) approved the Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund (BAGEY), Hong Kong's first fully native tokenised fund for professional investors. That product was built with BNY, not HashKey, and is issued directly on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, targeting a yield of roughly 7% in US dollars. By late September it had opened to eligible investors across the UK, Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands. The HashKey talks therefore sit further down the chain, around how such products reach investors rather than how they are created.
What does HashKey bring to the table?
HashKey Exchange became Hong Kong's first licensed platform to serve retail investors in August 2023, and holds Type 1 and Type 7 licences under the Securities and Futures Ordinance, plus a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence under the city's anti-money-laundering regime. It is part of HashKey Holdings, listed in Hong Kong under ticker 3887. By the end of 2024 the exchange reported cumulative trading volume above HK$600bn and user assets above HK$10bn. The Baillie Gifford discussions form part of its "Asia Connect" strategy of courting international financial institutions, though this collaboration targets professional investors rather than the retail base its licence also covers.
Where does this sit in the wider tokenisation market?
Tokenised real-world assets reached about $31bn in 2026, according to Binance Research, which projects the market could approach $1.6tn by 2030 as institutions move funds, bonds and treasuries on-chain. Hong Kong has made that race a policy priority through the SFC's licensing regime and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Project Ensemble, its wholesale tokenisation initiative. A tie-up between an established global manager and a licensed local exchange fits that agenda, provided it moves beyond exploration.
Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers
For asset managers and investors, the signal is that tokenisation is shifting from issuance to distribution. Getting a fund on-chain, as Baillie Gifford has already done with BNY, is becoming routine; the harder question is how to put those products in front of clients at scale, and traditional managers are now treating licensed exchanges as a possible answer. The caveat is that this specific announcement commits to nothing concrete. The test will be whether it produces a named product, a committed pool of assets and a launch date, rather than staying an exploratory memorandum.
