Standard Chartered Brings Its HK Dollar Token to Solana

• Anchorpoint plans to mint and redeem its HK dollar token (HKDAP) directly on Solana.
• The Solana version has no launch date or official token address yet.
• HKDAP circulation rose sharply in the days before the announcement.
• HSBC is taking a different route to Hong Kong dollar stablecoin users.

Anchorpoint Financial, the Standard Chartered-backed company that holds licence FRS01 as one of Hong Kong’s first two licensed stablecoin issuers, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Solana Foundation on October 30 to issue and redeem its HKDAP token natively on Solana. The Hong Kong dollar stablecoin has run only on Ethereum since its restricted beta opened in August, and the agreement sets no date for the Solana launch. It arrives in the same week that Anchorpoint’s own disclosures showed circulation climbing past 103 million tokens, up from about 6 million nine days earlier.

What the Solana Deal Covers

Under the memorandum, Anchorpoint would create and destroy HKDAP directly on Solana, so holders there would carry the issuer’s own token and not a wrapped copy of the Ethereum version held in a bridge contract. The partners also plan to work with Solana wallets, applications and corporate users on distribution. The Solana Foundation joins Anchorpoint’s Tokenised Money Adoption Programme, which launched in September with PwC Hong Kong as its first strategic partner.

The announcement says Solana already hosts about $4.9 billion in tokenized real-world assets spread across more than 835,000 holders. That gives a regulated Hong Kong dollar a ready pool of possible counterparties, although none of those holders uses HKDAP today. Lu Yin, Head of APAC at the Solana Foundation, pointed to fast settlement and access to the network’s global base of wallets and apps as the main openings for the token. Dominic Maffei, Anchorpoint’s CEO and co-founder, presented the deal as part of a plan to connect separate networks and institutions instead of building a closed system. The foundation recently joined Hong Kong’s OASES programme and intends to open a local office in the city.

Supply Jumped Before the Deal

During the beta, Anchorpoint posts circulation and reserve figures on its transparency page, and the last three snapshots show how fast supply has moved. On October 21 the page listed about 6.11 million HKDAP in circulation. By October 28 the figure had reached 16.11 million, and on October 30 Anchorpoint reported 103.10 million tokens against reserves of HK$104.21 million ($13.4 million), with cumulative transaction volume of 259.09 million HKDAP ($33.3 million).

Source: Anchorpoint transparency page, beta-phase disclosures.

The gap between reserves and supply stayed close to HK$1.1 million ($140,000) in all three snapshots, even as coverage fell from about 118% to roughly 101%. That pattern fits an issuer that keeps a fixed cushion of its own on top of reserves added one-for-one with each new token, which is the 100% minimum the Stablecoins Ordinance demands. Anchorpoint has not said who created the new tokens. With access still limited to institutions, corporates and professional investors, a small number of large client mints is the most likely explanation, but the figures are unaudited beta disclosures and the issuer has not confirmed it.

Why Native Minting Matters

Stablecoins usually reach a second blockchain through a bridge. The bridge locks tokens on the original network and releases a stand-in on the new one, which leaves the holder relying on the bridge contract as well as the issuer. With native issuance that extra layer goes away: Anchorpoint mints on each network itself, and a token on Solana carries the same claim on reserves as one on Ethereum.

For a licensed issuer this matters for compliance too. HKMA rules require reserves to sit in a trust for holders and tokens to be redeemable at par, and Anchorpoint can only meet those duties for tokens it issues and controls. Redemption will still go through authorized distributors such as HashKey Exchange, OSL and Standard Chartered. A Solana transfer may confirm in seconds, but turning HKDAP back into money in a bank account still depends on onboarding checks and banking hours.

HSBC Took the Opposite Route

Hong Kong’s other licensee is moving in a different direction. HSBC, which received licence FRS02 on the same April 10 date, started rolling out its RedCoin (RCHKD) in October through PayMe, a payment app with more than 3.3 million users and over 100,000 merchants, on a ledger the bank runs itself.

HSBC starts with customers it already serves and keeps the infrastructure in-house. Anchorpoint is betting that third-party wallets and tokenized asset platforms on open networks will bring users to HKDAP, a model that can scale more widely but has no ready-made consumer base.

What Solana Users Can’t Do Yet

For anyone with a Solana wallet, nothing changes today. Anchorpoint’s FAQ lists a single official contract, on Ethereum mainnet at 0x87622385F960fcCB3121d6D0A9513bd1D9Bed6cA, and no Solana mint address has been published. The company has also not said which distributors will support Solana, which wallets will integrate first, or whether retail access will start at the same time as the Solana deployment.

Institutions will feel the change first. Once a distributor can deliver HKDAP on Solana, products like the tokenized note Anchorpoint announced on October 16, which used HKDAP for subscriptions, redemptions and interest payments, could settle on a cheaper network. For SOL holders, a regulated Hong Kong dollar asset broadens a stablecoin market led by US dollar tokens, but any effect on network fees depends on transaction volumes that do not exist yet.

Anchorpoint has said retail use could begin as early as the end of this year. Fake HKDAP tokens have already turned up on-chain, and the HKMA register lists only two licensed issuers, so any token called HKDAP on Solana that appears before Anchorpoint publishes an official mint address is an unofficial copy.