Today Libeara, a tokenization solution incubated by Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures, unveiled its first planned offering. In conjunction with Fundbridge Capital it is tokenizing a Singapore dollar government bond fund. Fundbridge is the regulated entity and will manage the fund which targets accredited investors. However, the offering is subject to appropriate regulatory approvals.
“This will be the first time a Singapore Dollar Government Bond Fund will be offered in token format,” said Aaron Gwak, Founder and CEO of Libeara. “Ensuring that FundBridge’s investors can buy native tokens, where each token represents a unit of the fund, is central to the infrastructure of the tokenisation solution that we have created for FundBridge. To boost credibility and structural integrity, the Fund will be working with an international credit rating agency to have it rated.”
The regulated tokens will be issued on public blockchains – Stellar and Ethereum.
Numerous US Treasury and money market funds have been tokenized on public blockchains. Some of them, such as Franklin Templeton’s fund, are regulated. But plenty are not. Hence, roughly $400 million has been invested in tokenized government funds based on “attestations” by the unregulated issuer. In contrast, Libeara provides a platform for a regulated route.
After all, CEO Aaron Gwak spent more than 13 years at Standard Chartered Bank, latterly as Head of Capital Markets ASEAN. The startup grew out of Standard Chartered’s participation in the 2021 Global CBDC Challenge, where it made the finals.
Tokenization use cases
Meanwhile, Libeara is targeting three groups of use cases. As in this example, it supports the tokenization of funds for regulated managers. It also wants to work with governments to issue native bond tokens. Plus it’s a general purpose security token issuance platform.
The startup is seen as a core member of its digital asset portfolio. “As we now have institutional grade custody and exchange of digital assets with Zodia Custody and Zodia Markets, Libeara is the next logical step to better serve our customers,” said Alex Manson, who leads SC Ventures.
Meanwhile, last week SC Ventures announced a $100m digital asset joint venture fund with Japan’s SBI.
