HK$10 Billion! Hong Kong Issues World's Largest Digital Bond

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government announced on November 11th that it has successfully priced a digital green bond equivalent to approximately HK$10 billion under the Government Green Bond Programme. The breakdown is as follows: a HK$2.5 billion 2-year bond priced at 2.5%, a RMB 2.5 billion 5-year bond priced at 1.9%, a US$300 million 3-year bond priced at 3.633%, and a €300 million 4-year bond priced at 2.512%.

It is understood that following two successful issuances of digital green bonds in 2023 and 2024, this issuance marks another milestone for the HKSAR Government in advancing bond tokenization. With a total issuance size of HK$10 billion and total subscription amounts across the four currencies exceeding HK$130 billion, this represents the world's largest digital bond issuance to date. Furthermore, the issuance tenor has been extended to up to 5 years to meet investor demand for longer-dated digital bonds.

Mr. Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), stated that since 2023, the HKMA has been committed to further scaling the market and pursuing innovation with each digital bond issuance by the HKSAR Government, aiming to realize Hong Kong's vision of becoming a global digital asset hub. This issuance utilized tokenized central bank money, laying the groundwork for the future integration of other forms of digital currency and fostering interoperability among different digital infrastructures to create synergies.