The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched a new funding stream under the Guardian project, focusing on the tacit issuance of Variable Capital Company (VCC) funds in digital asset networks. This area is intended to address tax, political and legal issues, while increasing the distribution channels for asset managers.

The Project Guardian Group, composed of 17 financial institutions, launched 5 additional industry pilots to test promising cases of asset tokenisation. This potentially paves the way for integration throughout the capital markets value chain, including listing, distribution, trading, clearing and asset servicing.

Financial institutions shall, inter alia, test: institutional level mechanisms to effectively price and execute bilateral digital asset transactions and to study real-time reporting and analysis of digital asset transactions. They also cooperate on the use of digital assets to allow for more liquid investment and management of discretionary portfolios and alternative assets, together with automated portfolio rebalancing.

MAS is also exploring an open, digital infrastructure project that will operate tokenised financial assets and applications. This new initiative, called Global Layer One (GL1), will facilitate liquid cross-border transactions and allow for trading in global liquidity pools, while complying with relevant regulatory requirements and guidelines. The participation of public-private stakeholders will help to ensure that the underlying digital infrastructure is established in line with international standards.

MAS also cooperates with the financial industry to develop a model of interconnected networks (INM), which will serve as a common framework for the exchange of digital assets in independent networks. This will enable financial institutions to carry out transactions with each other without having to use the same network.

More information on:

https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2023/mas-partners-financial-industry-to-expand-asset-tokenisation-initiatives