The hidden battle of charging piles on the blockchain: Hong Kong challenges Singapore's 16 trillion RWA hegemony with 9,000 charging piles
"This is not an ordinary encrypted asset; it is a financial conduit that penetrates the real economy," said a fund manager. "Hong Kong people have turned charging piles into capital weapons."01 Dual City Chess Game: $16 Trillion Cake and Misaligned Competition
When Boston Consulting predicted that global tokenized assets would reach $16 trillion by 2030, the two major financial centers in Asia embarked on distinctly different paths for RWA (Real World Asset Tokenization):
- Hong Kong's physical anchor: 9,000 charging piles under Longxin Technology issued revenue rights certificates through Ant Chain, reducing financing costs for small and medium operators from an annualized 15% to 6.8%
- Singapore's financial gene: BlackRock's BUIDL fund issued tokenized government bonds on Ethereum, with 75 wealthy individuals holding 93% of the shares, and a minimum subscription threshold of $5 million
The essence of this competition is a battle for financial discourse power. In 2024, Singapore's wealth management scale surged by 42%, attracting Goldman Sachs and Citibank to establish RWA centers; Hong Kong, on the other hand, launched a combination of measures: the "Stablecoin Regulation" effective August 1 allows commercial paper reserves, and Web3 concept stocks like Boyaa Interactive surged by 7% in a single day.
02 Charging Pile Revolution: Ant Chain's Offensive and Defensive Battle for Physical Assets
The securitization of charging pile assets by Longxin Technology has opened a new chapter for RWA empowering the real economy. Ant Chain's blockchain technology equips each charging pile with a "financial brain": current data is recorded on-chain in real-time, and power generation revenue is distributed by the second, allowing investors to trade revenue rights shares at any time through digital wallets.
Directly addressing industry pain points: 85% of public charging piles in China are operated by private enterprises, with 82% of operators owning fewer than 10 charging stations. Traditional financial institutions refuse to lend due to scattered assets and high assessment costs, while Ant Chain's "AIoT + Blockchain" solution compresses due diligence costs by 90%.
l "We give each charging pile a digital ID." An Ant Chain engineer revealed key technologies:
l Dynamic rights confirmation: Identifying device status through current fluctuations, automatically freezing assets if downtime exceeds 48 hours
l Revenue penetration: Charging fees go directly to on-chain accounts, avoiding fund misappropriation by operators
l Risk grading: Annualized returns of 12% for city center piles, reaching 19% in remote areas
The first batch of 9,000 charging piles raised 100 million yuan, shortening the financing cycle for small and medium operators from 3 months to 72 hours. A Zhejiang operator remarked, "In the past, I could only get 500,000 yuan with real estate collateral; now I can get 1.2 million with 6 charging piles."
03 Regulatory Shadow War: Sandbox Showdown and Compliance Blitzkrieg
As the Hong Kong Monetary Authority tests bond tokenization, the Monetary Authority of Singapore suddenly tightens approval for digital securities licenses—this regulatory game has escalated from a policy race to a technological war.
Hong Kong's blitz tactics:
l Opens a "regulatory sandbox green channel" for Alibaba's ecosystem, with the Longxin project taking only 27 days from application to approval
l Allows commercial paper as stablecoin reserves, with Ant Xineng's photovoltaic power station token approved for issuance
Singapore's countermeasures:
l Requires RWA projects to embed real-time auditing systems, with on-chain reserve proof needing hourly updates
l Imposes a 35% penalty tax on non-open-source contract projects, directly targeting ZKsync's $2.2 billion "shadow banking"
A deeper contest lies within the legal framework: Hong Kong relies on judicial cooperation in the Greater Bay Area, allowing mainland courts to directly access on-chain evidence; Singapore introduces variable smart contracts that can automatically freeze assets in the event of sanctions. As the EU's MiCA regulations require RWA projects to submit compliance reports daily, legal conflicts between East and West erupt on-chain in advance.
04 Ant Matrix: Alibaba's RWA Ecosystem Closed Loop
Behind Ant Chain, Alibaba has built a "son matrix" covering the entire lifecycle of physical assets:
l Longxin Group (10.75% stake): Hub for tokenization of charging pile revenue rights
l Jida Zhengyuan (10.48% stake): Provides quantum encryption for government data on-chain
l Xinkai Pu (30% controlling stake): Integrates 210 million student consumption data assets into campus one-card systems
l Junzheng Group (15.6% stake in Tianhong Fund): Connects 800 million users' funds through Alipay
This closed loop is devouring more physical scenarios:
l GCL-Poly Energy converts photovoltaic panel power generation into dynamic revenue certificates
l Yuanlong Yatu promotes the on-chain copyright split trading of the Winter Olympics "Bing Dwen Dwen" IP
l Shibei Gaoxin attempts to refine the data of Shanghai's 20 million population into compliant assets
"Ant's ambition is to put China's real economy on the blockchain." A banking director pointed at the curve on the screen—after the launch of Alibaba's RWA projects, related companies' stock prices averaged 31 percentage points higher than the Hang Seng Index.
05 Endgame Simulation: $16 Trillion Market Under the Collision of Two Civilizations
When Citibank predicts that the scale of tokenized securities will reach $5 trillion in the 2030s, the war between Hong Kong and Singapore has transcended the competition of financial centers, evolving into the ultimate collision of the digitalization of physical assets and the on-chaining of traditional finance.
Singapore's deadly temptation:
l BlackRock's BUIDL fund offers an annualized return of 5.3%, but 75 wealthy individuals hold 93% of the shares
l Maple Finance's credit pool yield surges to 10%, underpinned by Vietnam's real estate bubble loans
Hong Kong's breakthrough point:
l Charging pile tokens attract 32,000 retail investors, with an average investment of only 3,100 yuan
l Leveraging the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, transforming manufacturing capacity into RWA targets
The more profound impact lies at the level of monetary sovereignty: Hong Kong allows RWA to be pegged to the renminbi, while Singapore adheres to the US dollar standard. When Trump signed the GENIUS Act requiring stablecoins to be 100% pegged to US Treasuries, the Eastern camp is building a de-dollarization value network using charging piles, photovoltaic panels, and liquor delivery rights.
On June 15, 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced the approval of the first Chinese RWA fund to enter. On the same day, the giant screen at Hong Kong's Central Trading Plaza lit up with a new slogan: "What is on-chain here is not digital, but the productivity of 1.4 billion people."
