The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has issued a four currency (HKD, CNH USD and EUR) green bond, equivalent of around 756 million US dollars, says HSBC Hong Kong in a press release. The bank describes it as the largest digital bond issuance globally, as well as the first multi-currency digital bond issuance.
Following the issuance, settled on 7 February, HSBC and the Bank of East Asia used this digital bond as collateral in a repo transaction. HKMA used the Central Moneymarkets Unit (CMU) as the central securities depository (CSD), connecting with HSBC’s Orion blockchain system. The same blockchain was used for the collateral in the repo transaction.
John O’Neill, HSBC’s global head of digital assets strategy, says: “The four digital bonds, recently issued by the Hong Kong government on HSBC Orion as part of the CMU’s infrastructure, have seen unprecedented investor demand, secondary trading, and now repo trading.”
Using blockchain for repo transactions is still quite new. Last year, a digital bond issued by Swiss town Lugano was used this way, Ledger Insights reports. Also, UBS, DBS, and SBI did a test across borders as part of Singapore’s Project Guardian. These used a digital bond on a public blockchain as collateral.