The Banque de France (BDF) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) focused on bilateral cooperation in the realms of wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and tokenization.
The HKMA has expressed its intention to explore interoperability between their CBDC infrastructures and enhance cross-border transaction settlement efficiency, as stated in an official statement.
The BDF has already established the DL3S infrastructure, which serves as a foundation for the introduction of a CBDC.
Meanwhile, the HKMA will leverage its Project Ensemble sandbox for research purposes.
Project Ensemble, initiated by the HKMA in March, is aimed at studying asset tokenization and developing a CBDC to support such initiatives.
This endeavor has brought together various stakeholders, including regulators from the Architecture Community of Hong Kong, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), major local banks, HashKey crypto exchange, Ant Digital Technologies, and Microsoft Hong Kong.
The project is set to commence research and testing in the coming months.
Denis Beau, the First Deputy Governor of the BDF, expressed his enthusiasm for the collaboration, stating that the timing aligned well with the HKMA’s recent announcement regarding Project Ensemble.
He further mentioned the BDF’s eagerness to conduct further testing of their DL3S platform within this cooperative framework.
It’s worth noting that the HKMA and BDF are already participating together in other projects.
The HKMA recently joined the second wave of participants in the European Central Bank’s distributed ledger technology testing, focusing on interoperability among blockchain modules for the settlement of tokenized government
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