As part of Hong Kong’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) trials, one of the pilot use cases involved using tokenized real world assets (RWA) such as real estate. This was used as collateral for a restricted loan in e-HKD. BCG, HKT (Hong Kong Telecom) Payments and ZA Bank led the pilot. As part of the findings, BCG concluded that digital currencies, including CBDC, tokenized deposits and stablecoins could add HK$160 billion (US$20.5bn) or 0.5% to GDP by 2032.
BCG was also the source of the global asset tokenization forecast of $16 trillion by 2030. It added some critical caveats to the latest HK$160 billion GDP enhancement figure. To achieve that additive growth, tokenization and digital currencies need to be adopted at scale in the near term. That means the infrastructure needs to be available, adopted and have regulatory support. As we’ll show, to practically implement the demonstrated e-HKD use case would need regulatory changes relating to real estate. At the same time, neither e-HKD nor tokenized deposits are close to launch.
The GDP growth will potentially come from four key benefits. The first is unlocking liquidity in assets. BCG estimates the assets potentially available for tokenization in Hong Kong at HK$36 trillion, of which almost $29 trillion is real estate, with residential making up $20 trillion. Currently, the outstanding loans secured against residential real estate amount to 9% of the value. That compares to 33% in the United States and 23% in the UK. Hence, if the lending increased to 10%, that’s HK$200 billion in additional loans.
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