Commonplace Chartered CEO Invoice Winters stated on Monday that Hong Kong’s push for tokenized cash and stablecoins may lay the foundations for a brand new period of digital commerce funds.
Talking at Hong Kong FinTech Week, Winters pointed to the continuing trials of tokenized deposits and the creation of a Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin as potential breakthroughs in cross-border commerce.
“I am unable to say we have totally grasped the digital nature of those flows but, however we definitely will,” Winters stated. “With improvements such because the tokenization of deposits being led in Hong Kong, the creation of a Hong Kong greenback stablecoin makes it a really attention-grabbing foreign money of change, or medium of change for worldwide commerce.”
He added that Hong Kong’s “experimentation with digital belongings as a worldwide commerce mechanism will clean the evolution to a brand new worldwide commerce order on totally digital phrases.”
His feedback got here almost a yr after Commonplace Chartered’s Hong Kong unit, Animoca Manufacturers and HKT introduced a three way partnership to use for a license from the Hong Kong Financial Authority to difficulty Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoins below town’s new regulatory regime. The trio is one among 5 entities collaborating within the HKMA’s stablecoin issuer sandbox, which was launched final yr.
At the moment, throughout Hong Kong FinTech Week, Hong Kong’s market regulator Securities and Futures Fee (SFC) introduced that domestically licensed exchanges shall be allowed entry to world liquidity by means of a shared order ebook.
The adjustments, detailed in a brand new round, will allow Hong Kong platforms to combine world liquidity swimming pools below what the SFC calls the ASPIRe roadmap for digital belongings.
By permitting a “shared order ebook,” the SFC goals to slender worth spreads, improve market effectivity and enhance worth discovery, however warns of elevated operational and settlement dangers.
In a round, the SFC stated platforms should keep pre-funding, delivery-to-payment settlements, uniform market surveillance throughout jurisdictions, and compensation reserves to guard buyer belongings.
