GF Securities, a leading Chinese brokerage firm, has teamed up with HashKey to initiate tokenized securities in various currencies, including the U.S. Dollar, the Hong Kong dollar, and the offshore yuan, in Hong Kong. This development is part of Hong Kong’s ongoing efforts to establish itself as a stronghold for cryptocurrency.
On Friday, HashKey released a statement revealing that the tokenized securities, named “GF Token“, which accrue daily-interest and are redeemable daily, are accessible to high-net-worth individuals and institutional professional investors. “This key event marks a significant advance in Hong Kong’s tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and paves the way for a wider cross-chain collaboration of tokenized securities in the Hong Kong securities industry in the future,” HashKey announced.
The USD variant of the tokens is pegged to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), a comprehensive indicator of the overnight cash borrowing cost, backed by Treasury securities. These tokens are issued on HashKey Chain and will be distributed subsequently.
In the statement, Zeng Chao, CEO of GF Securities (Hong Kong), said that the partnership with HashKey Group to launch GF Token is a crucial step towards building Hong Kong’s tokenized securities ecosystem. “We are confident that this move will further strengthen GF Securities (Hong Kong)’s leadership in the evolving digital finance spectrum.”
GF Securities’ initiative aligns with the Hong Kong government’s recent announcement of a fresh policy statement that lays out plans to endorse RWA tokenization and broaden its crypto licensing framework. Paul Chan, Hong Kong’s financial secretary, expressed that “The Policy Statement 2.0 outlines our vision for the development of digital assets and exhibits the practical application of tokenization to enhance the diversification of use cases.”
Earlier this week, Guotai Junan International, another prominent Chinese brokerage firm, announced that it had secured regulatory approval to provide cryptocurrency trading services in Hong Kong. Several other securities firms, including China Merchants Securities and Huatai International, are also in the process of enhancing their licenses to allow crypto trading.
