HSBC says Hong Kong is well placed to scale stablecoins

Hong Kong could be better placed than many Asian markets to scale stablecoin products because it has already moved parts of its financial system on-chain, said Daragh Maher, HSBC digital assets research head, at the bank’s Global Investment Summit.

The city now needs real commercial uses and better interoperability to expand tokenisation, Maher said.

Since August 2024, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has piloted tokenised deposits to settle digital asset trades and has issued digital green bonds three times.

Its latest bond sale in November raised a record HK$10 billion (US$1.28 billion), and Project Ensemble now includes banks plus Ant International and BlackRock to test tokenised deposits in transactions tied to tokenised money market funds.

Industry participants said stablecoins could provide the on-chain cash leg needed to make those transactions more efficient.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post

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Hong Kong’s tokenisation project now handles real-value interbank transactions

EnsembleTX moved from sandbox tests to real-value transactions in November 2025. It will run through 2026 1.
HSBC completed a HK$3.8 million (US$485,000) cross-bank transfer in tokenised deposits for Ant International, the overseas business arm of Ant Group 2.
The upgrade lets tokenised payments move between banks. Most tokenised deposit systems still limit transfers to clients within one bank 3.
Futu Securities International (Hong Kong), an online brokerage, subscribed to a tokenised money-market fund with tokenised deposits. The deal involved China Asset Management (Hong Kong), an investment manager, Bank of China (Hong Kong), and Standard Chartered 2.

Banks are using the project to scale tokenised finance

HSBC Orion, the bank’s digital asset platform, has supported more than US$3.5 billion in digitally native bond issuance, including deals with the Hong Kong government and a UK government pilot 4.
Projects like Ensemble can connect tokenisation with existing market infrastructure instead of sitting apart as small trials 4.
HSBC already runs live tokenised deposit services in Singapore, the UK, and Luxembourg. It plans to add the US and United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the first half of 2026 4.
Project Ensemble is testing the interbank setup for tokenised deposits, starting with transfers through Hong Kong dollar Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), with a later move to 24/7 settlement in tokenised central bank money 1.