PANews reported on May 7 that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced on its official website today the establishment of the Ensemble Project Architecture Working Group to work with the industry to establish standards and make recommendations to support the development of Hong Kong's tokenization market.

The working group will promote the development of industry standards to support interoperability between wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs), tokenized currencies, and tokenized assets. The working group will make recommendations on specific topics, initially focusing on establishing mechanisms for tokenized asset transactions and smooth interbank settlement of tokenized deposits through wCBDC. The working group will also help design and build the Ensemble project sandbox, which is scheduled to be launched in the middle of this year, to further study and test tokenized use cases.

The working group is composed of cross-sector industry representatives, covering regulators, international organizations, academia, local and multinational banks, major players in the digital asset industry and technology companies. Initial members include the HKMA, the Securities and Futures Commission, the Hong Kong Centre of the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, the CBDC Expert Group 2 and seven private institutions, namely Bank of China (Hong Kong), Hang Seng Bank, HSBC, Standard Chartered Hong Kong, HashKey Group, Ant Digital Technology and Microsoft Hong Kong.