Bank of China’s BOCI Breaks Ground With Country’s First Tokenized Security

BOCI, Bank of China’s investment banking division, has broken new ground by issuing 200 million yuan ($28 million) in fully digital structured notes in Hong Kong. This is the first instance of a tokenized security issuance by a Chinese financial institution in the region.

UBS originated the product, which was allocated to its clients across the Asia-Pacific region, demonstrating an ongoing partnership between BOCI and UBS in the field of digital structured notes.

Previously, in December 2022, UBS issued a $50 million tokenized fixed-rate note under the governance of English and Swiss laws, utilizing a regulated blockchain.

This recent transaction signifies the launch of the first product in the Asia-Pacific region of its kind, established under the legal frameworks of Hong Kong and Switzerland and tokenized on the primary Ethereum blockchain.

In an official statement, Ying Wang, BOCI’s Deputy CEO said, “In cooperation with UBS, we’re streamlining digital asset markets and products for Asia-Pacific customers by developing blockchain-based digital structured products specifically tailored for this region’s customers. We’re inspired by Hong Kong’s evolving digital economy and are dedicated to fostering the digital transformation and innovative growth of its financial industry.”

“We are pleased to work with BOCI on this transaction to bring structured products onto a public blockchain network, supporting our APAC clients’ increasing interest in fully regulated digital asset products,” said Aurelian Troendle, the Global Head of MTN Trading at UBS. “Blockchain technology can tremendously enhance efficiency in high-frequency issuance activities, ultimately resulting in benefits for investors.”

This month, Hong Kong also opened public retail trading of cryptocurrencies and is encouraging digital currency exchanges to get licensed in the city, showing its intent to become a major global center for crypto.

Editor’s note: This article was written by an nft now staff member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4.