A Hong Kong tokenised fund now trades at any hour, and a trade leaves the token on Ethereum where it is
Investors in ChinaAMC's tokenised money market funds can now sell shares to each other at any hour on PantherTrade, a licensed crypto trading platform that holds the shares for its clients. A trade there changes only PantherTrade's own client records: the fund's register and the Ethereum tokens stay as they were, and the buyer holds a claim on PantherTrade. A market maker quotes near the fund's value, and anyone can buy from or sell back to the fund at its daily price if the trading price drifts.
- Problem
- An investor in a tokenised money market fund in Hong Kong can now sell shares on a licensed trading platform at any hour instead of redeeming at the next net asset value. When a share changes hands, which book records the trade, what does the buyer then own, who keeps the price close to the fund's value, and how does this differ from trading the fund's listed class on the exchange?
Since 26 October 2026, investors in ChinaAMC’s tokenised money market funds can sell shares to each other at any hour on PantherTrade, a licensed Hong Kong crypto trading platform that also holds the funds’ shares for its clients. A trade there changes only PantherTrade’s own client ledger: the fund’s register still lists PantherTrade as the shareholder, the token on Ethereum does not move, and the buyer holds a claim on PantherTrade. A market maker quotes near an estimate of the fund’s value, and on business days anyone can buy from or sell back to the fund at its daily price, which pulls the trading price back when it drifts.
The problem
On 26 October 2026 the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said it had approved round-the-clock secondary trading, meaning sales between investors at a market price, of two funds run by China Asset Management (Hong Kong) Limited (ChinaAMC): the ChinaAMC HKD Digital Money Market Fund and the ChinaAMC USD Digital Money Market Fund (SFC release, para 1). It was the first approval under the SFC’s circular of 20 April 2026 (Wire). Until then an investor left by redeeming through a distributor, at a price set once a day.
The release names no platform. ChinaAMC’s notice of 23 October 2026 names PantherTrade and limits trading to Class F shares (page 2).
The SFC may extend the route. On 2 November its Executive Director of Investment Products, Elisa Ng, called the approval “an important test case” for whether “the same model can provide secondary liquidity for broader tokenised products” (speech, page 2; Wire).
How it works
Separate records say who owns a share of these funds, and a trade on PantherTrade changes only one of them.
A share is a unit of ownership in the fund. Investors buy through a distributor, a licensed firm such as a bank or broker that holds shares in its own name for its clients; PantherTrade is one. The fund’s net asset value (NAV), the value of one share, is set at 11:00 Hong Kong time on each business day, called a dealing day, and investors buy from or sell back to the fund at that price (prospectus, pages 160 and 161).
The fund’s register, “the official record of ownership”, lists distributors, not the investors behind them. Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) keeps it as the fund’s Administrator, and through its Libeara platform also keeps the fund’s tokens on Ethereum, in one wallet per distributor. A token is an entry on a blockchain, a database copied across many computers that keep it in step, and here one token stands for one share. A wallet is an address on the blockchain that holds tokens, and only wallets Standard Chartered approves can hold these. Each distributor keeps its own client ledger of individual investors, which ChinaAMC and the Administrator cannot see (prospectus, pages 139 and 140).
Who records a share, and where a trade on PantherTrade lands
After the investor has moved the shares to PantherTrade. The register and the tokens list only distributors; each distributor's own ledger lists its investors.
- ChinaAMC tokenised money market fund: Register and tokens kept by Standard Chartered, the Administrator
- Bank: Distributor without trading
- The bank's clients
- PantherTrade: Distributor and trading platform
- Investor: Sells 1,000 shares
- Market maker: Buys 1,000 shares
A sale on Saturday night moves 1,000 shares from the investor to the market maker in PantherTrade's ledger. Nothing above changes.
- Bank: Distributor without trading
The worked example follows one investor who holds 1,000 shares through a bank that does not offer trading, and who sells on a Saturday night. The buyer is a market maker, a dealer that quotes prices at which it will buy and sell, and is paid for doing so. The table counts only this investor’s 1,000 shares.
| Fund register | Ethereum | Client ledger | |
|---|---|---|---|
| At the start | Bank: 1,000 | Bank’s wallet: 1,000 tokens | Bank’s ledger: investor, 1,000 |
| After a transfer to PantherTrade, on a dealing day | PantherTrade: 1,000 | PantherTrade’s wallet: 1,000 tokens | PantherTrade’s ledger: investor, 1,000 |
| After the sale on Saturday night | PantherTrade: 1,000 | PantherTrade’s wallet: 1,000 tokens | PantherTrade’s ledger: market maker, 1,000 |
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Moving the shares to PantherTrade. Only shares held through PantherTrade can trade there (notice, page 2). The investor asks the bank to move them, by 11:00 on a dealing day. The register then lists PantherTrade instead of the bank, and within one business day the tokens move to PantherTrade’s wallet (notice, pages 2 and 8).
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The sell order. On Saturday night the investor places a limit order, an offer to sell at a stated price or better, the only kind PantherTrade accepts for these funds (trading rules, section 13). The account must already hold the shares (notice, page 3). If the price is far from the indicative NAV, a running estimate of NAV published at least every 15 seconds, PantherTrade must warn the investor that selling back to the fund is an option (notice, page 3; SFC circular, para 12).
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The match. PantherTrade pairs the offer with the market maker’s bid in its order book, the list of open offers to buy and sell. The price is whatever the two agree, and it can differ from NAV (notice, pages 2 and 3). PantherTrade blocks any trade more than 4% from the price of five minutes earlier (trading rules, section 13.3).
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The record. PantherTrade’s ledger moves the 1,000 shares to the market maker (trading rules, section 7.1). The trade is “recorded as transfers on the Token Trading Platform’s ledger”, with “no change in direct Share ownership” (prospectus, page 143). The register still lists PantherTrade, and the tokens stay in its wallet, because Ethereum records holdings only down to the distributor (page 139).
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The cash. The investor’s account is credited “shortly upon any trade, generally within 1 hour” (prospectus, page 144). This is settlement: the buyer has the shares and the seller has the cash.
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The way back to the fund. Any investor, the market maker included, may buy on PantherTrade and sell back to the fund at NAV, or buy from the fund and sell on PantherTrade (prospectus, page 162). That is what pulls the trading price towards NAV. Requests must arrive by 11:00 on a dealing day (page 160), so at weekends the price rests on the market maker, which PantherTrade pays through rebates and holds to a quoted spread, the gap between its buying and selling prices, under 2% (trading rules, section 13.2). PantherTrade’s holding on the register falls only when someone sells back to the fund.
After step 4 the market maker owns the shares only in PantherTrade’s ledger. The notice says such a buyer “may hold a beneficial interest or entitlement against the Token Trading Platform rather than being recorded as the direct owner” (notice, page 11). In plain terms, the buyer has a legal claim on PantherTrade, and PantherTrade is the shareholder. If PantherTrade fails, recovering tokens held in its name “may be limited, delayed, or subject to legal proceedings” (page 11).
The same funds have a class listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK), stock code 3471 for the HKD fund and 3472 and 9472 for the USD fund, which cannot be swapped for the tokenised class (notice, pages 1 and 5). A listed investor is not on the register either: HKSCC Nominees Limited, a company of the exchange’s clearing house, holds all listed shares, and brokers record who owns what (prospectus, page 120). The differences are in timing and in who can deal with the fund.
| Tokenised class on PantherTrade | Listed class on the SEHK | |
|---|---|---|
| Name on the register | PantherTrade | HKSCC Nominees Limited |
| Hours | Any time | SEHK trading hours |
| Cash and shares change hands | Generally within one hour | The second settlement day after the trade |
| Who can buy from or sell back to the fund | Any investor, through PantherTrade | Only appointed dealers, called Participating Dealers |
Source: prospectus, pages 110, 120, 121, 144 and 162.
Why it is built this way
Round-the-clock trading needs a record that can change on a Saturday night, and the register changes only on dealing days. Keeping PantherTrade as the shareholder makes its ledger that record and leaves the fund’s daily cycle untouched: ChinaAMC says primary dealing “will not be impacted” (notice, pages 12 and 13). No document gives this as the reason. It is inferred from the timetables. The SFC’s circular fits the same design: it puts retail trading on a licensed platform’s own matched market, with every trade paid for in advance, so both sides sit on one ledger (circular, paras 8 to 10).
For a first pilot, keeping trades off the register and the chain is the right choice. The Administrator, the NAV process and the token custodian keep business hours, and trading runs under platform rules the SFC already supervises (release, para 2). It is also a limit that will have to go before more platforms join. The investor gives up a place on the register, and each platform would keep its own order book, with different prices on each (notice, page 10). No document describes the design as temporary. With one platform today, the split is a forecast.
In our markets
India leaves secondary trading of tokenised bonds to a later stage of Demat 2.0 (Under the Hood). In Singapore, FundBridge Capital’s ULTRA units are ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum that move onchain between whitelisted wallets (pilot entry). Other Hong Kong tokenised funds, such as CSOP’s, deal only through distributors (pilot entry).
The case against
The market is thin and costly when it matters. The fund already deals every business day at NAV, and ChinaAMC warns that the trading price can sit “significantly higher (a premium) or lower (a discount)” than indicative NAV, with divergence that “may be higher” at weekends (notice, page 9). Class F USD returned 3.38% in the year to 30 September 2026 (factsheet), so a round trip at a spread just under 2% would take more than half a year’s return. No document read for this piece publishes actual spreads, and ChinaAMC says there is “no guarantee that any market making activity will be effective” (notice, page 12).
The token does no work in the trade. A critic would say the buyer holds a book entry at PantherTrade, and that a platform could offer round-the-clock hours over any book entry. The alternatives sit in the same prospectus: buy the listed class through a broker, or deal at NAV.
Against these, the market gives a cash-like holding an exit when the fund is closed, which is ChinaAMC’s stated reason (notice, page 8), though no weekend volumes yet show who pays for it. The larger gain would come later, if fund shares can settle trades or serve as collateral at any hour. The SFC links trading proceeds to tokenised deposits under Project Ensemble (release, para 3) and names tokenised collateral as a medium-term direction (Wire). None of this is live, and no document says whether a claim on a platform can be pledged, so this reading rests on inference.
For Ethereum
The shares are permissioned tokens on Ethereum: Standard Chartered runs them on “Ethereum smart contracts” and approves each wallet that can hold them (prospectus, pages 139 and 140; PantherTrade). No contract address is published. Round-the-clock trading adds no Ethereum activity, because trades stay on PantherTrade’s ledger, and onchain data will show only transfers between distributors, as the Regulatory Wire item on the April circular expected.
The design does not yet use what the chain could offer. On Ethereum, the shares sit on the same ledger as stablecoins and other tokenised funds, so a share could be swapped for a stablecoin or pledged in an approved contract with both sides completing together and no bridge between chains. If the token became the legal record, shares could also move between licensed platforms at any hour instead of through the register on a dealing day. No document read here plans either: the register remains the legal record, and the HKMA’s model intends to settle between banks in central bank money on its own systems (Wire). This reading rests on inference.
What to watch
- The market maker list on ChinaAMC’s and PantherTrade’s websites.
- Spreads, which platforms must publish (circular, para 20), and volumes, weekday against weekend.
- A second licensed platform listing the shares.
- Settlement of trading proceeds in tokenised deposits under Project Ensemble.