Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau: Promoting the Wider Application of DLT Technology in Digital Asset and Fixed Income Markets

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau jointly announced that the first phase review on promoting the further application of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in Hong Kong's fixed income market has been completed.

The review results indicate that the current legal and regulatory environment in Hong Kong is sufficiently flexible to support the issuance of tokenized bonds. The three batches of iconic tokenized bonds issued by the Hong Kong government and the increasing number of corporate issuances (including those from issuers in Asia and the Middle East) are the best evidence of this. The next phase will involve a review of the legislation to promote the broader application of DLT in the fixed income market and the digital asset sector, including allowing the electronic execution of tokenized bond issuance documents and exploring concepts such as "custody" and "transfer" of tokenized fixed income products.