Bank of Korea maps unified ledger for tokenized bonds

Bank of Korea Governor Hyun Song Shin outlined a plan to tokenize government bonds and place those tokens, a wholesale central bank digital currency and tokenized commercial bank deposits on a single shared ledger. He presented the proposal on a panel at the European Central Bank Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal.

Shin said tokenized government bonds would simplify issuance and ongoing management by making it easier to verify collateral, credit asset providers’ accounts and reverse transactions when needed. He described tokenizing government bonds as “the big prize,” adding operations would be “much easier, much less prone to mistakes if you have everything tokenized.”

The proposal would extend Project Hangang, the Bank of Korea’s pilot that is testing a blockchain-based wholesale CBDC. Under Shin’s outline, the pilot would expand to test interoperability between tokenized government securities, a wholesale CBDC and tokenized commercial deposits on the same ledger.

A Bank for International Settlements report from July 2025 reviewed 39 tokenized bonds-24 corporate and 15 government-and found suggestive evidence of narrower bid-ask spreads versus conventional bonds, while issuance costs and yields were broadly similar. The BIS noted tokenization can reduce settlement risk, broaden investor access and enable new services if legal and technical challenges are resolved.

Market data show tokenized government debt already accounts for a large share of tokenized real-world assets. Provider RWA.xyz reports tokenized U.S. Treasury debt at about $14.6 billion, roughly 46% of a $31.7 billion market for tokenized real-world assets.

Shin said the operational benefits of digitized securities include faster verification of collateral, automated conditional settlement and fewer manual errors. He linked those efficiencies to government securities, which are widely used for savings and as collateral in financial markets.

Officials and market participants will need to address regulatory, legal and infrastructure questions before wider use, including custody arrangements, reporting requirements and cross-border standards. Shin’s roadmap sets out a controlled testing path in a wholesale environment.