Bahrain's central bank granted Solowin Holdings the first stablecoin issuer license in the country on June 3, but three months later, no coin has been issued. The company has not provided a timeline for when it might launch one, and neither have the two Hong Kong licensees, five months after their approval.
Thomas Zhu, a Solowin director and CEO of its AlloyX subsidiary, attributes the Gulf choice to demand rather than regulatory hurdles. He told Invezz that the Middle East holds substantial sovereign capital and treasury-management demand, which underpins the company's footprint in Dubai and Bahrain.
Revenue growth driven by AI infrastructure
Solowin's revenue for the year ending March 31 reached $28.05 million, an 895% increase from roughly $3 million. About $22.2 million, or 79%, came from AI infrastructure—cloud compute sold to enterprise customers—not stablecoins or tokenization. The company's investor deck shows total value tokenized at $52 million, against $848.8 million in assets under administration and $1.04 billion in stablecoin and fiat trading volume.
Zhu frames the AI side as deliberate: the company will not train general-purpose large language models but will supply the compliant capital, token, and governance layers that enable AI to conduct financial transactions. Operating expenses were $40.14 million, leading to a net loss of $13.29 million. The company ended the year with $16.8 million in cash, up from $3.84 million. AXG closed at $2.22, near its 52-week low, with a market cap of about $429 million.
Institutional demand remains thin
Institutional demand for stablecoins and tokenized assets is still early. Nic Roberts-Huntley, CEO of Blueprint Finance, noted on the On The Margin podcast that on-chain flows are thin. He questioned why traditional finance institutions would change their practices for exposure to something a fraction of the size of their current assets.
Hong Kong tokenization pilot, not stablecoin regime
Solowin's Hong Kong link is through tokenization, not stablecoins. Its brokerage, Solomon JFZ, is a participant in the HKMA's EnsembleTX pilot, which runs tokenized money market fund trades through 2026 alongside Standard Chartered, HSBC, Bank of China (Hong Kong), BlackRock, and Franklin Templeton. Hong Kong's stablecoin register remains closed, with only HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial (a joint venture of Standard Chartered, HKT, and Animoca Brands) listed since April 10. Neither has issued a coin; HSBC's Hong Kong dollar coin is expected in the second half of 2026.
Tokenization: strong vs. weak
The value of tokenization depends on what a token conveys. Chris Turner, co-founder of Kula, distinguishes between title tokenization—where owning the token means owning the asset—and weaker forms that give contractual exposure to economic upside without ownership. Solowin's FERION platform aims for the strong version, allowing institutions to issue tokenized assets compliantly and bridge on-chain transactions with off-chain legal recognition. Zhu identifies cross-jurisdictional legal affirmation, custody, and regulatory compliance as the main constraints.
Solowin does not disclose the legal structure behind its $52 million tokenized figure. For comparison, Libeara, a Standard Chartered-backed platform Solowin backed in April, runs the eighth-largest book of tokenized US Treasury funds at $695.3 million. The entire tokenized Treasury market is $15.87 billion, which shrank 1.6% last month.
Licenses are being rationed, vendors are numerous, and the money to support them has not yet arrived in sufficient amounts. As the sector waits, the gap between regulatory approvals and actual issuance remains wide. For more on stablecoin adoption, see stablecoin users top 300 million and TRON stablecoin transfers hit $2.1T.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
