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HSBC Sibos spotlight series - Exploring the universe of digital assets and HSBC Orion
28 Plays1 year ago
In the second episode in the HSBC Sibos Spotlight series, Eleanor Hill invites John O’Neill, Managing Director, Global Head of Digital Assets Strategy, HSBC and Zhu Kuang Lee, Managing Director, Chief Digital Data and Innovation Officer from HSBC to discuss the innovative activity happening around asset tokenisation.
In this candid deep dive, our guests identify the emerging use cases for tokenisation, touch on the future trends that could accelerate the adoption of digital assets, and explore the challenges that HSBC’s Orion platform is addressing for corporate treasurers in a tokenisation context.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to HSBC Global Viewpoint, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
00:00:13
Speaker
Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.
00:00:16
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:00:17
Speaker
And now onto today's show.
Collaboration Overview and Cybos 2023 Topics
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to TMI's TreasuryCast and HSBC's Cyboss Spotlight.
00:00:27
Speaker
I'm Eleanor Hill, Editor of TMI, and I'm delighted to be working with HSBC to bring you an in-depth look at the events from this year's Cyboss.
00:00:36
Speaker
Throughout this series, we will explore the critical topics on the Cybos 2023 agenda that will shape our industry in the next decade, including sustainability, digital acceleration, and technological innovation.
Opportunities and Challenges in Finance
00:00:50
Speaker
We'll examine the opportunities and the challenges in the areas of payments, securities, cash management, and trade.
Introduction of Guest Speakers on Asset Tokenization
00:00:57
Speaker
In the studio today, we have John O'Neill, who is Managing Director, Global Head of Digital Assets Strategy at HSBC, and Zhu Kwang Lee, known as ZK, who is Managing Director, Chief Digital Data and Innovation Officer, also from HSBC.
00:01:14
Speaker
And we're going to talk about the very hot topic of asset tokenization and have a look at HSBC's innovative activity in this space.
00:01:23
Speaker
So welcome both
Understanding Asset Tokenization
00:01:24
Speaker
of you.
00:01:24
Speaker
It's really great to have you here with us.
00:01:26
Speaker
And I know we've got an absolute whistle-stop tour of tokenization in store for our listeners over the next 25 minutes or so.
00:01:35
Speaker
So lots to pack in.
00:01:36
Speaker
But ZK, it'd be really good if we could kick off maybe with a bit of an explanation of what tokenization is, just for some of our listeners who aren't maybe as familiar with it.
00:01:48
Speaker
as some other people out in the world, what does tokenization actually
Market Growth Potential of Tokenization
00:01:52
Speaker
involve?
00:01:52
Speaker
Can you maybe give us an example and what would the benefits be?
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:01:57
Speaker
So basically asset tokenization is the process by which an issuer creates digital representations of value or contractual rights for either digital or physical assets in the form of digital tokens and normally on a distributed ledger or blockchain.
00:02:14
Speaker
So tokenization in general is growing annually and the World Economic Forum has predicted that total tokenized market size will potentially reach around 24 trillion by the year 2027.
00:02:27
Speaker
Trillion, did you say?
00:02:28
Speaker
Let me just check that figure.
00:02:29
Speaker
24 trillion, right?
00:02:30
Speaker
Yes, correct.
00:02:32
Speaker
And actually tokenized asset is actually essentially the next iteration of asset representation.
Benefits of Tokenization
00:02:38
Speaker
So in the past, we had physical documents that represent asset.
00:02:43
Speaker
We then dematerialize the assets by representing them using electronic book entry.
00:02:48
Speaker
And now we are looking at the next evolution, which is basically any tokenized asset.
00:02:53
Speaker
So any asset can be tokenized.
00:02:55
Speaker
It can be stock and bonds.
00:02:56
Speaker
It can be real estate, infrastructure, commodities, cash, or even art can be represented as tokens.
00:03:03
Speaker
And I have received a lot of questions.
00:03:05
Speaker
So some people would ask me, how are tokenized assets different from assets in electronic book entry form?
00:03:11
Speaker
So basically, tokenized assets are programmable with the rights and obligations being governed by smart contracts.
00:03:18
Speaker
And smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement written into lines of code.
00:03:25
Speaker
So with smart contracts, we can create the desired characteristics of tokens and control their behavior in the entire asset lifecycle.
00:03:34
Speaker
Now, for the benefits, tokenization helps to facilitate more efficient trading of assets
00:03:39
Speaker
as compared to existing complex structure of intermediaries in our current market infrastructure due to the ability to do atomic swap of tokens where the trades are settled instantly compared to current settlement cycle of a few days.
Tokenization of Real-world Assets
00:03:54
Speaker
And tokens are also divisible, so each token can represent a tiny fraction of any asset.
00:04:01
Speaker
And this enables fractional ownership and improves the liquidity of real-world assets by enabling smaller-sized investments.
00:04:09
Speaker
So, for example, some assets which are currently reserved for specific investor groups such as high net worth clients or institutional investors, they can now be democratised to increase the reach of potential investor base where new investment or capital raising models can be created.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then investors will benefit from lower investment risk through better portfolio diversification with smaller investment and more precise exposures.
00:04:40
Speaker
So besides efficiency and fractional ownership, as the tokens are created on blockchains, we also, of course, we are looking at the benefits such as the transparency and the immutability of the ledger records.
00:04:51
Speaker
So just to summarize, all these characteristics means that there's a wide range of opportunities that tokenization can enable.
00:04:59
Speaker
And I think that we are just scratching the surface.
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it?
00:05:03
Speaker
And then like you say, so many different opportunities.
00:05:05
Speaker
And you mentioned the kind of currency side of things.
00:05:08
Speaker
I like that you mentioned art as well, because that's become very real very quickly.
00:05:12
Speaker
So I was in London a couple of weeks ago and went to the Royal Academy of Art, which has a summer art exhibition every year.
00:05:20
Speaker
It's very, very traditional institution.
00:05:23
Speaker
And they
00:05:24
Speaker
usually, you know, favour sort of old, old styles of art, although they try to mix things up with the summer exhibition.
00:05:30
Speaker
And this year, there were some NFTs available.
00:05:33
Speaker
And I thought, wow, you know, that's the first time I've seen that actually in the physical art world, the digital side of things available.
00:05:41
Speaker
So it's very, very quickly becoming real and becoming part of everyday life.
00:05:47
Speaker
So lots to think about.
00:05:48
Speaker
John, anything you wanted to
The Orion Platform by HSBC
00:05:50
Speaker
add on that?
00:05:50
Speaker
I think ZK has given us a great overview.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's great of you.
00:05:54
Speaker
And I think it touches all the key points, but actually just taking on the example of art you both raised there, I think that illustrates quite nicely something, kind of another dimension to this, just out to everything that ZK has said, which is one thing we've seen over the last 12 months or so is standardization of terms across the industry.
00:06:14
Speaker
And what's becoming increasingly recognized is that there is a distinct difference between tokenized assets and digital assets.
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:21
Speaker
And the difference, many of us would say, is that those digital assets are natively digital.
00:06:25
Speaker
So what do I mean by that?
00:06:26
Speaker
I think the difference between tokenized assets and digital assets, art is the ideal way of illustrating it.
00:06:31
Speaker
So let's say you have a Picasso.
00:06:33
Speaker
The Picasso is on a wall.
00:06:35
Speaker
It's in a gallery.
00:06:36
Speaker
You can put a token on the Picasso, and you can say that token represents ownership of that physical object.
00:06:43
Speaker
The point being is it exists separately and physically.
00:06:46
Speaker
And that could be the case for gold.
00:06:47
Speaker
It could be the case for commercial property, a number of real world things.
00:06:52
Speaker
As you were saying, Elena, is you could also create the art in a digital format itself.
00:06:57
Speaker
That's an NFT, right?
00:06:59
Speaker
So it's natively digital.
00:07:00
Speaker
It doesn't exist in the physical world in any sense.
00:07:03
Speaker
And that would be natively digital.
00:07:05
Speaker
So that's, I hope, a fairly clear illustration using art of the difference between the two things.
00:07:10
Speaker
But that becomes pretty interesting in financial markets because you can elect to do copies of bonds or equities which exist in existing systems.
00:07:20
Speaker
Or you could actually say you don't want to do a copy at all.
00:07:22
Speaker
You could make it natively digital.
00:07:24
Speaker
And that's pretty key to some of the thinking that we've done at HSBC.
00:07:27
Speaker
Very cool.
00:07:28
Speaker
And yeah, so many different opportunities.
00:07:30
Speaker
John, you mentioned HSBC there.
00:07:33
Speaker
So let's talk about it.
00:07:34
Speaker
I know you've done absolutely loads of work in this space, notably the Orion platform.
Impact of Orion's Launch
00:07:40
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about what the platform is, what it does, and also how did it come into being and when did it come into being?
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, and actually in just making that differentiation up, I'm thinking a bit, Eleanor, about Orion.
00:07:53
Speaker
So my team, ZK's team, all of us who have been working on Orion,
00:07:57
Speaker
is one of the things that we decided pretty early on, and this is going back now 18 months when we started creating the platform.
00:08:05
Speaker
The platform went live this year, went live earlier this year, but it takes a long time to build these platforms.
00:08:10
Speaker
A lot of teams across technology, across operations, across legal,
00:08:15
Speaker
across all sorts of functions.
00:08:16
Speaker
HSBC have put a lot of effort into this.
00:08:19
Speaker
But right back at the beginning of the journey, one of the key decisions we made is that we wanted a platform which was capable of creating natively digital assets, as I gave in that art example.
00:08:30
Speaker
But we weren't thinking, as you'd expect, of art or
00:08:34
Speaker
or anything physical.
00:08:35
Speaker
Certainly not to start, but who knows where the journey will take us in time.
00:08:40
Speaker
But the place that we've decided to start as an institution, and we think this is the real sweet spot between very liquid assets, which probably don't require blockchain approaches, and highly illiquid assets, which are rarely transferred as fixed income.
00:08:53
Speaker
So we decided to start with bonds.
00:08:55
Speaker
We think that has a good liquidity profile.
00:08:58
Speaker
In particular, going back to some of the points ZK has already made, is we think
00:09:02
Speaker
bonds in fixed income, we can deliver real benefits in terms of faster settlement and potentially fractionalization as well.
00:09:10
Speaker
So what we've done with Orion is we've built a platform which creates digital assets, it provides custody, enables them for trading through primary markets and also secondary markets, all those different layers, as we think of them, are provided.
00:09:26
Speaker
And that reaches a lot of different businesses at HSBC.
00:09:29
Speaker
And when I'm emphasizing creating those assets in a natively digital format, what that means is that rather than being held at a third-party CSD, the bond that we create on Orion is actually held at HSBC, technically within HSBC security services.
00:09:48
Speaker
And when we make it available for trading, we do it in the classic manner that we would often make a bond available for trading via our debt capital markets desk.
00:09:58
Speaker
And then also,
00:09:59
Speaker
As you'd expect,
Orion's Digital Asset Services
00:10:00
Speaker
HSBC, we offer secondary trading in the assets through our fixed income trading business.
00:10:05
Speaker
So all those businesses are touched by this platform.
00:10:08
Speaker
And I think it's fair to say a key for all of us who worked on this was making sure we joined up all the different efforts across the different teams to enable this.
00:10:17
Speaker
So what that finally resulted in is going live in February this year.
00:10:23
Speaker
And the launch client that we cooperated on very closely all throughout the build phase,
00:10:29
Speaker
was the EIB, the European Investment Bank.
00:10:32
Speaker
And what we've issued in February is a natively digital bond from the European Investment Bank, cooperating with a number of banks in a syndicate.
00:10:41
Speaker
But to be really clear, Orion is HSBC intellectual property.
00:10:45
Speaker
It's our platform.
00:10:46
Speaker
We've built it ourselves.
00:10:47
Speaker
We control its destiny.
00:10:49
Speaker
And the reason I'm saying that is we can list more bonds on the platform.
00:10:52
Speaker
So it's a pretty exciting set of capabilities for us.
00:10:56
Speaker
We're looking to do more.
00:10:57
Speaker
We're looking to list more.
00:10:59
Speaker
And we can also use those sets of technologies to do different things for different parts of HSBC.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:04
Speaker
Like you say, Don, it's a very exciting technology for you, but also for clients as well.
Future Trends in Tokenization
00:11:11
Speaker
You mentioned things like faster settlement.
00:11:13
Speaker
What other kind of challenges are you addressing through Orion?
00:11:17
Speaker
What else does it bring into the table?
00:11:19
Speaker
And how might the clients that I mentioned benefit from all of this?
00:11:23
Speaker
So as you said, faster settlement is a really important one.
00:11:26
Speaker
If you were designing these markets today, you wouldn't be saying it would take five days or two days to settle a bond, right?
00:11:33
Speaker
You can do things much more rapidly than that.
00:11:37
Speaker
Another one that's quite attractive to people is precision of settlement.
00:11:40
Speaker
So it's not just speed, it's knowing when your asset will settle.
00:11:43
Speaker
And if you think from a trading perspective, the reason that's attractive is not just the operational considerations.
00:11:51
Speaker
It's fundamentally if you know
00:11:54
Speaker
when title will be transferred, when an asset will be delivered, you know when you'll get your money.
00:11:58
Speaker
And it's about freeing up cash.
00:12:00
Speaker
It's about making money available for trading.
00:12:04
Speaker
And people like to say you accelerate the rapidity of trading.
00:12:07
Speaker
You trade more frequently.
00:12:09
Speaker
That means more opportunities.
00:12:10
Speaker
That means more liquidity.
00:12:11
Speaker
So that's pretty exciting.
00:12:14
Speaker
And ZK already mentioned fractionalization.
00:12:16
Speaker
That's a big one as well.
00:12:17
Speaker
So you can split these assets into smaller chunks.
00:12:21
Speaker
You can do that without this technology, without blockchain technology, to be clear.
00:12:25
Speaker
You can do it in a more efficient manner with this technology.
00:12:28
Speaker
And I think that's pretty exciting because it gives the potential of creating new markets and assets where traditionally they haven't really existed in market environments.
00:12:38
Speaker
So as I said, we're starting with a familiar market, fixed income.
00:12:42
Speaker
We think it's got really exciting potential in other markets and we could spend a lot of time talking about that as well.
00:12:47
Speaker
Definitely.
00:12:48
Speaker
You said the golden phrase there, John, which was freeing up cash.
00:12:52
Speaker
And I know our listeners, our corporate treasurers out there are going to be extremely excited about that and wanting to learn all about this.
00:13:00
Speaker
But ZK, I just wondered if you could maybe fill us in a little bit on some of the trends that you see coming down the line in asset tokenization.
00:13:09
Speaker
Maybe you can give us a flavor of some of the emerging use cases that you see opening up.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:13:16
Speaker
So, John, just feel free to add in.
00:13:18
Speaker
But there are three trends which I think is really important for us to think of.
00:13:23
Speaker
So firstly, due to the programmable nature of tokenized asset, we'll actually be looking at more complex financial instruments going forward.
00:13:33
Speaker
So potentially we could see an explosion in the types of tokens in future that could result in the emergence of completely new asset classes.
00:13:42
Speaker
That is beyond the use case of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens that we see today.
00:13:47
Speaker
So just as an example, actually I've seen a use case where an investor, when he buys a gold token, he will automatically buy a carbon credit token as well through smart contracts.
00:13:57
Speaker
This actually enables the investors to contribute to the environment while investing.
00:14:02
Speaker
Another good example would be composite tokens, which can be used in the place of a fund structure.
00:14:10
Speaker
It can hold various types of asset tokens and it can be programmed to work very differently from how a fund current operates.
00:14:18
Speaker
A third example would be in the private asset space, where we recognize their huge potential given their illiquidity as well as high barriers to entry.
00:14:28
Speaker
So private assets
00:14:29
Speaker
typically have very complex operating model that involve multiple parties and are in some cases still reliant on legacy platforms or even spreadsheets to record and process activities throughout their lifecycle.
00:14:45
Speaker
So the programmable nature of tokenized asset actually provides a clear advantage here where smart contracts can be used to automatically execute
00:14:54
Speaker
all the currently manual asset issuance and servicing processes.
00:14:58
Speaker
So this actually improves the efficiency and reduce the settlement time and lower the transaction costs.
00:15:04
Speaker
And this is particularly very appealing for private asset.
00:15:08
Speaker
So that's the first trend.
00:15:10
Speaker
So secondly, I think that financial institution will play a much bigger role in the DeFi ecosystem as it develops.
00:15:19
Speaker
So tokenized asset actually provides an angle
00:15:23
Speaker
for financial institutions to go to play a role in the DeFi ecosystem by introducing tokenized asset into the DeFi ecosystem.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that will include the decentralized exchanges as well.
00:15:35
Speaker
So the best way to see how financial institutions can drive change and innovation in the digital asset space is by first considering
00:15:43
Speaker
core traditional functions namely to safeguard clients asset to fulfill regulatory requirements and to simplify the overall investment process so as regulated financial institution asset services are well placed to engage with regulators and policy makers on issues such as digital asset custody trading and settlement so by advocating for clear and consistent regulatory frameworks asset services can actually help to create a more structured
00:16:13
Speaker
environment for the development of the digital asset ecosystem.
00:16:17
Speaker
And also, asset services can also provide the infrastructure to bridge digital and traditional asset.
00:16:24
Speaker
So for example, our clients get access to digital assets without needing much change on their end.
00:16:30
Speaker
And traditional asset services can actually leverage their existing solution and deliver value to cater to investor demand for single consolidated portfolios.
00:16:41
Speaker
And if you look at traditional asset services, they have a huge network of providers such as subcustodian to safe keep the traditional asset.
00:16:49
Speaker
And this can be extended
00:16:51
Speaker
cover digital asset as the network continue to evolve and grow.
00:16:55
Speaker
And clients can capitalize and harness the benefit of the network effect.
00:17:00
Speaker
So in a nutshell, for the second trend, right, financial service provider can actually play traditional roles in the digital asset space, which include the trust anchor from KYC, AML perspective, liquidity provider, market makers, and custodian, etc.
00:17:14
Speaker
They can also play new roles, such as DeFi provider, digital asset issuer, infrastructure provider, platform operators, and digital wallet provider, etc.
00:17:24
Speaker
And all of these roles would help to scale the tokenized asset market.
00:17:28
Speaker
And we need to start early to ensure that we are in the game.
00:17:31
Speaker
The third trend that I would say is that regulators are actually getting very involved in the tokenized asset space.
00:17:37
Speaker
And we do see more traction coming from market planning and infrastructure perspective where multiple parties are invited to come together to work on initiatives that are spearheaded by regulators.
00:17:49
Speaker
So for example, we see Project Guardian in Singapore, Project Evergreen in Hong Kong, etc.
00:17:54
Speaker
So this actually shows the attention on tokenized asset and its potential to change the future financial landscape.
00:18:02
Speaker
As the financial system actually rapidly evolves towards a more digital environment, regulatory regimes should ensure the safety and stability of the financial system.
00:18:13
Speaker
So to drive further change and innovation in the digital asset space, the emergence of an institutional-grade asset servicing ecosystem is the prerequisite.
The Importance of Industry Collaboration
00:18:22
Speaker
And all in all, we are actually looking at a new asset representation and there's no doubt in the utility and role for the tokenization and the digital asset.
00:18:31
Speaker
But creating a more efficient, secure and transparent financial system for the transfer of digital asset would require a collaborative effort from various stakeholders, which includes technology providers,
00:18:45
Speaker
regulators, policymaker to really establish a common standards and protocol for the transfer of digital asset and to ensure that the digital asset networks can operate in a transparent and fair manner.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:18:58
Speaker
It's going to take a lot of coordination and collaboration, as you say, but ZK, some really good trends to watch
Legal and Transactional Impact of Tokenization
00:19:05
Speaker
there.
00:19:05
Speaker
And I love the little ESG example that you gave at the beginning there as well.
00:19:10
Speaker
Lots to be thinking about for our listeners.
00:19:13
Speaker
John, anything you wanted to add?
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think just following directly from what ZK said there is illustrating all the points that ZK made is, I think, illustrate something which I think is really important for people to bear in mind.
00:19:26
Speaker
And it was certainly very prominent for us when we built Orion and as we built our other platforms, which is that naturally people tend to, first of all, think of technology when they think of this subject.
00:19:36
Speaker
And that's completely appropriate because obviously it's a technology-led subject.
00:19:40
Speaker
But if you step back and you think,
00:19:43
Speaker
what it takes to buy anything, and this could be a bond, it could be property, it could be your lunch, it's literally anything, means it takes you taking ownership of the goods, number one, and it takes you paying for the goods.
00:19:57
Speaker
And what that means is if you sort of decompose that is you need a reliable and trusted form of money to pay for the goods, but also you need a legal environment where you're certain you have ownership of the thing that you're buying.
00:20:09
Speaker
And in some transactions, you know, buying a drink, buying lunch, that's trivial.
00:20:13
Speaker
Then other transactions, there's a lot of work that goes into proving that the person who holds the asset that you're paying does own the asset and it gets transferred to you.
00:20:24
Speaker
And we can all think of those of us who work in capital markets can think of the immense amount of infrastructure and systems that go into insuring that.
00:20:33
Speaker
And one of the things, as we've already said, really, that this technology gives the promise of, and we think we've realized this in Orion and we're realizing it in the other projects, which ZK also mentioned, is you can have legal certainty of title transfer and you can have forms of digital money.
00:20:49
Speaker
And we're very open to those forms as long as they're safe and they're low risk that enable the title transfer to happen.
00:20:57
Speaker
And the way we put that within Orion and our other systems is we call it digital delivery versus payment, digital DVP.
00:21:03
Speaker
So what that would mean, and in very simple terms, is you've got the bond.
00:21:07
Speaker
At the moment, it'll take a couple of days for it to transfer to you because there's a lot of checks on your ownership and also the checks on the money that I pay you is good.
00:21:17
Speaker
On Orion, you have the potential where
00:21:19
Speaker
because the bond is created on a blockchain and it doesn't exist as a copy.
00:21:24
Speaker
This is the point about natively digital is when I send you the token, you really can have ownership of the bond.
00:21:30
Speaker
And what we've also done within the system is we've tokenized commercial bank money so we can pay for the bond in tokenized format.
00:21:37
Speaker
And that just speeds up everything as we've already said.
00:21:39
Speaker
And I think Orion as a system is a good example of that.
00:21:44
Speaker
But if we think more broadly,
00:21:46
Speaker
We already talked about art and I think hopefully that's kind of easy for people even who work outside capital markets to grasp.
00:21:52
Speaker
But I always think a really good example of a transaction, which is just a lot of work at the moment, is property.
00:21:59
Speaker
So those of us who have bought property, whether it be in the UK, so whether it be in London or Singapore or pretty much anywhere, it just takes a long time to do it, right?
00:22:08
Speaker
You have to go to lawyers.
00:22:09
Speaker
It takes weeks to transfer.
00:22:12
Speaker
Also, the buyer wants to know you're good for the money.
00:22:15
Speaker
It's perfectly realistic to imagine a situation where an apartment, a house, or a commercial building, HSBC headquarters, those are legally represented by a token.
00:22:27
Speaker
And what that would mean is that if you own the token, you really do own that property.
00:22:33
Speaker
And what that would require, if you think about it, it would require the law in those locations to be changed so that token transfer really was ownership of the property.
00:22:43
Speaker
but also probably would require developments in digital money.
00:22:47
Speaker
So you can be confident that when someone pays you, they really do have the money and the transaction can settle rapidly.
00:22:52
Speaker
And the last thing I would say on that is that typically takes weeks or even months at the moment.
00:22:57
Speaker
But you can certainly imagine, I think this is really realistic, not tomorrow, but pretty soon, where you could transact a particular property in the time we're taking to listen to this podcast,
00:23:09
Speaker
multiple times.
00:23:10
Speaker
So that would be a market that's potentially pretty exciting.
00:23:14
Speaker
And that's what the economics call financialization, right?
00:23:16
Speaker
You're moving something into a market environment.
00:23:20
Speaker
And I think that's the
00:23:21
Speaker
big picture potential of this kind of technology.
00:23:24
Speaker
Oh, that sounds amazing.
00:23:26
Speaker
All right, look forward to that.
00:23:27
Speaker
I was just thinking about my big drawer full of paperwork about the house that I've got sat downstairs when you were saying that and how painful it was.
00:23:34
Speaker
And I've got all of the deeds, all of the indemnities, everything just sat in this huge file and many, many weeks and months, like you say, of the
00:23:44
Speaker
processes to go through.
00:23:45
Speaker
So look forward to that being changed in the future with fingers
Integration and Interoperability Challenges
00:23:49
Speaker
crossed.
00:23:49
Speaker
But just to finish up both of you, it'd be great to talk a little bit more about what else is next for asset tokenization.
00:23:57
Speaker
What does the roadmap look like a few years out from here?
00:24:01
Speaker
ZK, do you want to start on that one?
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:24:05
Speaker
I do think that we need to continue to work with regulators.
00:24:08
Speaker
So for example, Project Guardian in Singapore actually allows us to experience with tokenizing structured wealth products.
00:24:16
Speaker
And there will be more asset classes being tokenized in the next phase of the project itself.
00:24:21
Speaker
So asset tokenization needs to be carefully managed.
00:24:24
Speaker
And we need to look at solving the various challenges for this new asset class so that they can grow and scale.
00:24:32
Speaker
So one of the key challenge here is basically to integrate with the existing system and infrastructure.
00:24:38
Speaker
And in a hybrid world with both traditional and digital asset, asset services would need to consider how new digital asset platform are integrated with the existing system to offer our client a seamless offering across all the assets under custody, including, for example, consolidated reporting.
00:24:57
Speaker
So there may be changes needed to
00:24:59
Speaker
all the existing system to support digital asset as well.
00:25:02
Speaker
So one typical example would be the number of decimal places that digital asset have is not typically supported by legacy custody system.
00:25:10
Speaker
And the operational processes may need to be adapted as well to cater for real-time processing and settlement.
00:25:17
Speaker
And there needs to be education and training to upskill the existing operations team to better understand this new asset class.
00:25:25
Speaker
The other challenge is basically the interoperability.
00:25:28
Speaker
So recently there have been several tokenization networks that are launched by different financial institutions and market infrastructure providers.
00:25:36
Speaker
However, these platforms are currently generally quite siloed and do not interact with each other.
00:25:42
Speaker
So to fully leverage the potential of distributed ledger technology,
00:25:47
Speaker
financial institutions should collaborate to ensure that their platform exists as part of a connected ecosystem with the ability to move assets across platforms.
00:25:58
Speaker
So having said that, our future roadmap will look into solving these challenges by creating a more efficient, secure, and transparent financial system for the transfer of digital assets and to establish common protocol and standards for digital asset network communication.
Future Roadmap for Digital Asset Services
00:26:14
Speaker
And overall, our future roadmap is to create what we call as a network of networks, which will facilitate the movement of tokenized asset, as well as to ensure that we can service the entire digital asset lifecycle.
00:26:28
Speaker
So if you look at the industry now, I think that the industry is more advanced in the first half of the asset servicing lifecycle.
00:26:36
Speaker
But we need to focus more on the rest of the asset servicing lifecycle.
00:26:40
Speaker
So for example,
00:26:41
Speaker
We have seen many use cases of token issuance and digital asset custody.
00:26:46
Speaker
But what about distribution?
00:26:48
Speaker
So that is the future direction.
00:26:50
Speaker
I think you got a busy few years ahead of you.
00:26:54
Speaker
John, what would you like to add there?
00:26:56
Speaker
Yes, I think, of course, I could totally agree with all of that.
Expanding Orion and Ongoing Innovation
00:26:59
Speaker
And a big part of our job at HSBC, all of us at HSBC, is keep in touch with regulatory developments,
00:27:06
Speaker
ZK has mentioned the importance of coordination.
00:27:08
Speaker
And we're lucky in this subject because we see really significant efforts at coordination.
00:27:13
Speaker
It's not always perfect, but there really are international efforts towards that.
00:27:17
Speaker
And that's going to be important for the subject to realize its potential.
00:27:21
Speaker
But I think, Eleanor, the last thing I would say is that we think we're really at the beginning of a journey here.
00:27:28
Speaker
We've used Orion, we've used Guardian, some of the examples that we've given in this podcast to illustrate initiatives we've created already.
00:27:37
Speaker
But if we take Orion as one example, we're not ready to announce where yet, but we certainly think Orion has the potential to be further locations.
00:27:45
Speaker
It's in Luxembourg at the moment, and there's particular reasons why around law and regulation, why that was a really good place to start.
00:27:52
Speaker
We'll soon be launching in other locations.
00:27:54
Speaker
We're not ready to confirm where.
00:27:56
Speaker
where yet, but that'll be known fairly soon.
00:27:59
Speaker
And then also, we can add new products to the platform.
00:28:03
Speaker
And also, we've got a complementary platform, which again, we're not quite at the stage where we're going to announce it, but I've emphasized the way Ryan is natively digital assets.
00:28:13
Speaker
Also, for many of our businesses, physical ownership of real world assets is important.
00:28:19
Speaker
And for one of those businesses, I won't say which one, we're going to launch a complementary tokenization platform.
00:28:25
Speaker
which will allow people to more rapidly take ownership of a particular physical asset.
00:28:29
Speaker
So that's going to be pretty exciting when we announce it.
00:28:32
Speaker
And I think the way we feel about this overall is, as I've said, the beginning of a journey, it's got a long way to go.
00:28:40
Speaker
But what we feel pretty happy with, we think, although there's always more work to do, is if you have a set of experts internally around technology in the teams we all work with,
00:28:51
Speaker
around legal, around compliance, around product, just having experience of building these platforms means that you're well-placed to realize the potential in the future.
00:29:00
Speaker
So a lot more to do as the regulation, as the standards, as the technology develop, but we hope and believe we're pretty well-placed.
00:29:09
Speaker
And certainly we see more and more demand from customers for solutions in this space.
00:29:15
Speaker
So it's a pretty exciting place to be, we think.
00:29:17
Speaker
Excellent stuff.
Podcast Conclusion and Future Developments
00:29:19
Speaker
Oh, John, you've left us with some cliffhangers there.
00:29:21
Speaker
I feel like I've binged a box set on asset tokenization and then just been left with a coming next.
00:29:28
Speaker
So I have to invite you both back and hopefully get an update as and when you're ready to talk about everything.
00:29:35
Speaker
But thank you so much for joining us today on this podcast.
00:29:38
Speaker
It's been a pleasure and also a masterclass in one.
00:29:41
Speaker
So thank you.
00:29:42
Speaker
Thanks for doing the podcast.
00:29:44
Speaker
It's been a lot of fun.
00:29:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:29:46
Speaker
Thank you for joining us today.
00:29:48
Speaker
This has been HSBC's Cyboss Spotlight, a podcast miniseries produced especially by TMI for HSBC Global Viewpoint.
00:29:57
Speaker
To discover other episodes in this series, search for HSBC Global Viewpoint or TMI's Treasurycast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
00:30:06
Speaker
And to find out more about HSBC's presence at Cyboss, visit gbm.hsbc.com forward slash Cyboss.
00:30:33
Speaker
Thank you for joining us at HSBC Global Viewpoint.
00:30:36
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed the discussion.
00:30:38
Speaker
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