The Philippines is set to sell $179 million in tokenized treasury bonds for the first time.
The Philippine Treasury announced that it will issue 10 billion pesos ($179 million) of one-year treasury bonds for the first time after canceling the traditional auction scheduled for November 20.
The Treasury Bureau offers token bonds to institutional buyers with a minimum of 10 million pesos in increments of 1 million pesos. The bonds have a term of one year and will expire in November 2024. The final interest rate will be announced on the release date, according to a Bloomberg report.
The bonds will be under the government supervision of the Development Bank of the Philippines and the Land Bank of the Philippines.
“We're going to study the technology and see how far we can take it,” Deputy Treasurer Erwin Sta said when asked if the government was continuing to explore proven real-world assets and bonds.
The Philippines' move to issue tokenized bonds over traditional bonds comes amid growing interest among Asian governments in the tokenized bond market. In February, Hong Kong issued $100 million in green bonds under its green bond program. The government used Goldman Sachs' tokenization protocol to equate the bond with one year.
Another Asian country, Singapore, recently launched a series of pilots promoting real-world assets in partnership with JPMorgan, DBS Bank, BNY Mellon and investment firm Apollo. The United Arab Emirates has also partnered with HSBC to develop bonds.
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In addition to the growing popularity of blockchain-based real-world asset tokens in Asia, Israel's Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has completed tokenization of fiat and government bonds.
The tokenization of real-world assets using blockchain technology has recently gained popularity among governments. The trend has been boosted by the interest of financial giants like JPMorgan, HSBC and others.
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