In talking about Singapore’s digital assets work last week, Chia Der Jiun, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), mentioned that MAS was “taking steps” to tokenize MAS bills with CBDC settlement. In fact, MAS has already conducted two trial issuances in the last month, including one on Friday. The first was an issuance of just S$1 million on September 23, maturing a week later. The second was for S$10 million (USD 7.8m) and will mature in two weeks on October 23.
Both the maturities and volumes are indicative of trials, given typical issuances exceed S$10 billion and standard durations are four, 12 and 36 weeks. Like the mainstream bills, the tokenized ones are only available to institutional investors. Settlement uses the wholesale CBDC on the SGD testnet. “This will develop our capability to bring tokenised assets and tokenised central bank digital currency together for transactions and settlement on common infrastructure, with settlement certainty and finality,” said Mr Chia.
He did not address potential use cases for the tokenized bills, but if the program is sustained they could also serve as backing for SGD stablecoins and potentially for intraday repo.
Article continues …
Want the full story? Pro subscribers get complete articles, exclusive industry analysis, and early access to legislative updates that keep you ahead of the competition. Join the professionals who are choosing deeper insights over surface level news.
