Bybit's Tokenisation Pitch in Bengaluru Puts the Indian Ocean on the RWA Map

Bengaluru hosted the latest South Asian fintech conversation that matters for every operator from Male to Colombo to Karachi. At the World Fintech Summit 2026, Mykolas Majauskas, global head of policy at Bybit, framed real-world asset tokenisation as the missing rail that could carry India's fintech sector toward the often-quoted $1 trillion mark, with Karnataka positioned as the launch state.

For readers along the Indian Ocean rim, the speech is more than a Bengaluru news item. It is a signal about where regional retail capital, savings products and cross-border investment plumbing are heading over the next 24 months.

Majauskas argued that fractional ownership through tokenised assets can pull illiquid balance sheets, including real estate, infrastructure projects and private credit, into instruments that a mid-tier investor in Hyderabad or a salaried saver in Dhaka could actually buy. That argument lands differently when you remember that India's digital public infrastructure, from Aadhaar-linked KYC to UPI rails, already does the identity and payment work that tokenisation platforms elsewhere are still trying to bolt on.

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are watching closely. Both economies have stalled real-estate markets and infrastructure pipelines that need patient capital but lack a domestic retail base large enough to fund them at scale. A regulated tokenisation framework anchored in India would give Colombo and Dhaka a working template, and likely a direct on-ramp through cross-listed instruments once policy catches up.

For Maldives, the implication runs through tourism real estate and resort development financing, which has historically depended on a narrow band of foreign lenders. Tokenised resort equity, or fractional debt issued against operating assets, is not a hypothetical conversation in the Male boardrooms we speak with. It is the next obvious step once a credible South Asian venue exists to issue and clear it.

Pakistan's fintech operators face a harder regulatory path, but the State Bank's growing comfort with stablecoin-adjacent payment use cases suggests the door is not closed. If Karnataka becomes the proof point Majauskas described, Karachi's quantitative finance crowd will not need much convincing to push for a parallel sandbox.

The cautious note is regulatory. India's own digital-asset rulebook is still a patchwork of tax treatment, exchange registration and consumer-protection guidance. Bybit's framing, which leans on public-private collaboration rather than industry self-rule, reads as a deliberate signal to SEBI and the finance ministry that the exchange wants to operate inside whatever lines are drawn, not around them.

Two things to watch from a regional bureau seat. First, whether Karnataka's digital economy mission converts the summit rhetoric into a published tokenisation sandbox with timelines. Second, whether any Indian Ocean neighbour, most plausibly Sri Lanka given its IMF-driven appetite for new capital channels, signals interest in mutual recognition for tokenised instruments issued under an Indian framework. Either move would shift this story from keynote to infrastructure.