The Banque de France (BDF) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) have announced a collaboration focused on wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the tokenization of financial assets.
According to the press release, the collaboration is an important milestone in promoting financial innovation and strengthening the interoperability of digital currencies.
The HKMA’s participation in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Eurosystem exploratory work is an important step forward, making the HKMA one of the first central banking institutions outside the Eurosystem to join the initiative.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the Bank Development Fund and the HKMA aim to promote research on wholesale CBDC and tokenization. The MoU strengthens communication and cooperation and lays the foundation for the development of new technologies.
Currently, both the Bank Development Fund and the HKMA have become pioneers in the CBDC field. The focus of the cooperation between the two parties is to achieve interoperability between the DL3S infrastructure of the Civil Defense Force and the HKMA's "Collective Scheme" sandbox.
The HKMA’s “pooled initiative” announced earlier this year aims to explore innovative financial market infrastructure for interbank token settlement via a wholesale CBDC.
The trial aims to optimize settlement efficiency for international transactions and enhance interoperability between financial market infrastructures in different jurisdictions.
Recently, there has been a surge in global interest in CBDCs, with 94% of central banks exploring the potential of digital currencies, calling for the adoption of CBDCs to remain competitive with private digital currencies.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have become active advocates of CBDCs, emphasizing their role in modernizing the financial system and making cross-border transactions more efficient.
The BIS also expressed support for tokenization initiatives, which involve converting physical assets into digital tokens on a blockchain. The process aims to increase the efficiency, transparency and security of financial transactions.
The BIS’s tokenization projects, such as Project Promissa and Project Aurum, focus on the digitization of financial instruments and strengthening the privacy protection of CBDCs.
Currently, most central banks focus on wholesale CBDCs, which mainly meet large transactions between financial institutions, rather than retail CBDCs for the general public.
Central banks are more likely to issue wholesale CBDCs than retail CBDCs in the next six years, as some regulators believe that retail CBDCs have the potential to undermine the stability of the financial system.
Author: Blockchain Knight; from the ChainDD content open platform "DeDehao", this article only represents the author's point of view, not the official position of ChainDD. For all "DeDehao" articles, the originality and authenticity of the content are guaranteed by the contributors. If the manuscript is plagiarized, falsified, etc., the legal consequences caused by the contributors themselves are responsible. If there is infringement, violation of regulations and other inappropriate content on the DeDehao platform, please supervise the readers. Once confirmed, the platform will be offline immediately. If you encounter any problems with the content of the article, please contact WeChat: chaindd123
