The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has formed an expert group to drive the development of tokenized bonds, reflecting the region's broader push into tokenization.
In a statement released Friday, the de facto central bank said the group brings together industry participants, including JPMorgan Securities, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS, Ant Digital, and HashKey Group, among others.
According to the HKMA, the group will examine policy measures, market practices, and innovations, with the goal of driving "further adoption and scalability" of tokenized bonds.
The establishment of the expert group builds on a series of tokenization initiatives in recent years. In 2021, the HKMA partnered with the Bank for International Settlements to study bond tokenization.
In February 2023, the government issued HK$800 million ($102 million) of tokenized green bonds. It followed up in 2024 with a HK$6 billion ($766 million) multi-currency digital green bond offering denominated in HK dollars, Chinese yuan, U.S. dollars, and euros.
