Ant chairman touts 'tokenised money' for settlement but remains mum on stablecoin plans

Core Insights - Ant Group's chairman Eric Jing highlighted the company's advancements in tokenisation and the growing importance of blockchain in financial services during Hong Kong Fintech Week, while not addressing the stalled stablecoin initiative due to regulatory constraints [1][6]. Group 1: Tokenisation and Financial Services - Ant Group has successfully utilized tokenised bank deposits for cross-bank real-time settlement this year as part of the Hong Kong government's Project Ensemble [1]. - The company achieved real-time settlement across different branches of a global bank last year, showcasing the effectiveness of its tokenisation efforts [2]. - Jing emphasized the confidence gained from using tokenised deposits and money to facilitate real-time global settlement [3]. Group 2: Project Ensemble and Digital Asset Market - Project Ensemble, launched in August last year, aims to explore various use cases for tokenisation, which involves creating blockchain representations of traditional assets for faster and cheaper transactions [4]. - Ant Digital Technologies, a unit of Ant Group, operates Jovay, an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain focused on real-world asset tokenisation, and is actively participating in the sandbox [5]. Group 3: Regulatory Environment and Stablecoin Initiative - The stablecoin initiative of Ant Group has been stalled due to advice from the Chinese government for mainland firms to pause certain digital-asset activities in Hong Kong [6]. - Financial Secretary Paul Chan clarified that stablecoins are intended as tools for facilitating cross-border transactions rather than for investment or speculation [6].