SEABW 2026 Closes in Bangkok as Southeast Asia's Digital Assets Move from Experimentation to Institutional Adoption
- Thai SEC and Indonesia's EKRAF brought both countries' regulators onto a single stage
- SCBX, Bitkub, and Ascend Bit joined Circle, Tether, and the Solana Foundation in Bangkok
- Two-day program at ICONSIAM Hall, with closed-door roundtables and an AI Hackathon in parallel
BANGKOK, May 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Southeast Asia Blockchain Week 2026 (SEABW 2026), co-hosted by global Web3 venture capital firm Hashed (CEO Simon Seojoon Kim) and ShardLab (CEO Hojin Kim), concluded after two days at ICONSIAM Hall in Bangkok. The event brought together Thai and Indonesian regulators, leadership from SCBX, Bitkub, and Ascend Bit, and global firms including Circle, Tether, and the Solana Foundation — marking Southeast Asia's shift from experimentation to institutional adoption.
The program was organized around five themes: the Regulatory Frontier; Institutional Verticalization and the Great Convergence; RWA 2.0 and the Industrialization of Tokenization; the Agentic Economy; and the Base Layer Imperative. The structure positioned Southeast Asia not as a peripheral emerging market, but as a region where global Web3 adoption is being both tested and executed.
The policy track was anchored by Butree Vangsirirungruang, Director of the Digital Asset Policy Department at the SEC of Thailand; the Thailand Digital Asset Association (TDA); and Muhammad Neil El Himam, Deputy for Digital and Technology Creativity at Indonesia's Ministry of Creative Economy (EKRAF). Bringing two of Southeast Asia's largest markets onto the same stage was a defining outcome of the event.
From Thai industry, Kaweewut Temphuwapat (CIO, SCBX / CEO, SCB 10X), Atthakrit Chimplapibul (co-founder, Bitkub), and Apinand Dabpetch (MD, Ascend Bit — blockchain subsidiary of True Money under CP Group) addressed the digital transformation of Thailand's financial infrastructure. They were joined by Circle's David Katz, VP Strategy and Public Policy for Asia Pacific, and Tether regional leads Ploy Boonyavee and Eddy Christian Ng, alongside StraitsX, Ripple, BitGo, Anchorage Digital, Canton, Avalanche, the Solana Foundation, Xapo Bank, Token X, and AWS — covering custody, payments, tokenization, and AI.
Beyond the main stage, SEABW 2026 ran four closed-door roundtables on RWA tokenization and settlement, taking tokenized products to market, the institutional use of AI and Web3, and stablecoin settlement operations. The program also broke from the typical conference format with a performance by K-pop group tripleS, operated by Modhaus, whose on-chain fan governance lets NFT holders vote on group decisions — a case of digital culture and Web3 converging across Asia.
SEABW 2026 also hosted the SEABW AI Hackathon, a builder-focused track centered on "Solve a real-world problem around you with AI". 92 teams from across Southeast Asia and beyond competed, with the grand prize awarded to BEBRIDGE for RWANDA. RWANDA is an AI-powered rating system that analyzes RWA audit reports and grades each token's trustworthiness, helping retail investors assess de-pegging risk in advance.
Sponsorship spanned the full institutional stack. Local backing came from SCBX, SCB 10X, and InnovestX, alongside exchanges Bitkub and Bitazza Thailand and tokenization platform Token X. Global partners included Tether, the Solana Foundation, Xapo Bank, AWS, SOOHO.IO, AriqoX, Tiger Research, and StayGold.
Ruam Siratanapanta, Head of Digital Asset Business at SCBX, said: "SCBX is proud to continue supporting Southeast Asia Blockchain Week alongside Hashed and ShardLab. Southeast Asia is entering a new phase of digital asset adoption, where infrastructure, regulation, and real-world utility are beginning to converge — and SEABW has become an important platform for the builders, institutions, and policymakers shaping that future."
"Few markets have regulatory clarity and institutional momentum maturing at the same time. Bangkok sits squarely at that intersection," said Hojin Kim, CEO at ShardLab. "As digital assets and AI converge into a single agentic economy, our job is to bring regulators, institutions, and builders into the same room — so the region's next phase of adoption gets shaped through dialogue, not in silos."
SOURCE Southeast Asia Blockchain Week (SEABW)
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