In a recent LinkedIn post, Henk Jan Hoogendoorn, Chief Financial Sector Officer at Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA) announced the commencement of next steps with Blockchain solutions provider Settlemint to tokenize private shares and equity for companies.
As noted in the post, “ Next steps on tokenization of private shares / Private Equity discussed with our digital asset lab partner SettleMint both for Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Authority and any investment manager that would that would like to tokenize or fractionalize investments.”
Matthew Van Niekerk, Co-founder, SettleMint, commenting on the post stated, ” Thank you for hosting us both physically and digitally for the meeting Henk Jan Hoogendoorn! Really appreciated the opportunity to exchange views on the future of finance, financial markets infrastructure and the tokenization of private securities. Exciting times ahead for the industry!”
In April 2023, Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA) signed its second Blockchain MOU with Settlemint, after signing its first with R3. The agreement with Settlemint aimed to work on Blockchain and digital asset initiatives in the financial sector. QFCA and Settlemint agreed to explore potential synergies with industry participants, including financial institutions, fintech firms, and corporate organizations, to accelerate the adoption of blockchain and digital asset business models and solutions.
This announcement also comes immediately after the Qatar Financial Centre launched its digital assets Lab under the name Qatar Innovation dome. The event which was held on Sunday 29th of October 2023 included various keynotes, that explained how the digital assets lab will develop tokenization platforms and ecosystems for everything that has value whether tangible assets or intangible assets including real estate assets, securities, Sukuk, bonds and others in the future utilizing DLT ( distributed ledger technologies), blockchain, and smart contracts.
Yousuf Mohamed Al-Jaida Board Member and Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Financial Centre in his speech announced that one of the first use cases to be explored within the digital assets lab will be tokenized carbon assets. He goes on to state, “Secondly will be tokenizing private company shares to facilitate trading and management of these shares, as well as transforming Sukuk bonds into digital assets in addition to tokenized real estate to facilitate the buying and selling of real estate assets.”
