During his budget speech today, Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan made several comments about digital assets and tokenization. These include plans for the HKMA’s CMU, the central securities depository (CSD), to develop its own digital asset platform, regulatory plans to clarify the use of distributed ledgers for debenture holder registry purposes, and support for digital bearer bonds. He also confirmed the first stablecoin licenses will be issued next month.
During 2025 Hong Kong was the global leader in digital bond issuance, with Chan confirming it will continue to support digital bonds through its grant scheme, and plans to issue digital government bonds more regularly. Most of the issuances so far have used the HSBC Orion tokenization platform, which is integrated with the CMU. The CMU has always stated that it was willing to integrate with other platforms.
In his speech, Chan said the goal is to “enhance the efficiency of the asset management market, the CMU OmniClear will establish a digital asset platform this year. It will support the issuance and settlement of digital bonds. The platform will also be gradually extended to other digital assets and linked with other tokenisation platforms in the region, consolidating Hong Kong’s leading role in the realm of digital assets.”
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