Back in 2024, I wrote a column lamenting Bursa Malaysia’s decision to keep bitcoin and other crypto assets off its new multi-asset exchange, asking whether it might go down as Bursa’s biggest blunder.

Two Thursday’s ago, I spent the better part of a day at M Resort & Hotel in Kuala Lumpur listening to regulators, bankers and fund managers talk about digital assets not as a fringe curiosity, but as the plumbing for the next generation of our capital market. What a difference two years makes.

The event was LIDAC26, the Luno Institutional Digital Asset Conference, now in its second edition. Luno, one of the digital asset exchanges registered with the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), pitched it squarely at institutions rather…