On June 12, BOCI, a division of Bank of China’s investment bank, announced the issuing of digital structured notes on the Ethereum blockchain valued at 200 million Chinese yuan ($28 million). In Hong Kong, BOCI is now the first financial institution from China to issue a tokenized securities as a result of the action. The product was created with assistance from investment banking firm UBS for placement with one of its clients in the Asia-Pacific area. BOCI’s vice CEO, Ying Wang, stated:
By creating blockchain-based digital structured products that are expressly targeted at Asian consumers, we and UBS are advancing the simplicity of digital asset markets and products for customers in the region.
UBS has been growing its tokenization across structured products, fixed income, and repo financing concurrently with the development. In December 2022, the company released a $50 million tokenized fixed-rate note that was digitalized on a permissioned blockchain and governed by English and Swiss law.
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Hong Kong began providing retail consumers with access to cryptocurrency exchanges on June 1. About two weeks later, Hong Kong’s special administrative region’s under secretary for financial services and the treasury, Joseph Chan Ho-lim, declared that it is “actively participating” in the blockchain sector.