HKMA Establishes Ensemble Project Architecture Working Group to Support Development of Hong Kong’s Tokenization Market

According to a Hong Kong news release, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has established the Ensemble Project Architecture Working Group to support the development of Hong Kong's tokenized market. The working group is composed of cross-disciplinary industry representatives, covering regulators, international organizations, academia, local and multinational banks, major players in the digital asset industry, and technology companies. It is reported that the working group will promote the formulation of industry standards to support the interoperability between wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDC), tokenized currencies, and tokenized assets; at the same time, it will make recommendations on specific issues. In the initial stage, it will focus on establishing a mechanism for tokenized asset transactions and smoothly conduct interbank settlement of tokenized deposits through wCBDC; it will also assist in the design and construction of the Ensemble project sandbox, which is planned to be launched in the middle of this year, to further study and test tokenized use cases.