The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has announced an update on Project Ensemble, a digital asset tokenization plan mainly for wholesale digital currencies.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) launched Project Ensemble, a wholesale CBDC project, in March 2024. On May 7, the HKMA published a press release on the project and also announced plans for digital asset tokenization. A new team of experts will collaborate with Hong Kong’s industry to explore and develop its tokenization market.
The team, the Project Ensemble Architecture Community, will comprise industry experts. The community will provide suggestions to the HKMA on asset tokenization and also explore interoperability in wholesale CBDCs. Further, the project will research how banks could seamlessly settle interbank transactions of tokenized money through wholesale CBDCs.
The press release noted, “The community will also assist in the design and implementation of the Project Ensemble Sandbox which is targeted to launch by around mid-2024 to facilitate further research and testing of tokenization use cases.”
Apart from industry experts, the community will also have academics, bankers, regulators, and people from international organizations. Initially, members from the HKMA, other regulators, and seven private banks will become the community’s first members.
The banks include the Bank of China, Standard Chartered Hong Kong, HSBC, and others. Meanwhile, the announcement comes at a time when tokenization in financial services is gaining prominence. Global firm Deloitte also published a report a few weeks back on the subject. The company described the benefits of tokenization and its potential going forward.
International banking bodies like the BIS are also working on similar projects and CBDCs. In February this year, Citi launched trials of tokenizing its active funds.Are you interested in the world of crypto and blockchain?
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