Ant Group’s enterprise and services arm has connected $8.4 billion (60 billion Chinese yuan) worth of assets in Chinese energy infrastructure to the blockchain through asset tokenization in a bid to find better financing solutions for its projects, as per a Bloomberg report.
At the time of reporting, no official announcement was made on Ant Group’s official website about the blockchain integration.
Ant Group feeds data to blockchain
The digital arm has been feeding data on power output and outages for 15 million energy devices to the blockchain.
Tokenization of assets has typically been linked to a more efficient capital raising process, usually carrying out financing for projects with no underwriters or financial intermediaries in between.
While the technology remains untested on a large scale, cases in which tokenization has been noted include Dubai’s Prypco Mint real estate tokenization and the tokenization of gold through Paxos Digital Gold.
This allows investors to get fractional ownership in sectors that usually require a lot of documentation in traditional finance to secure. Ant Group is a privately held company and does not trade on public markets.
In 2020, the firm was set to debut in what would have been the largest IPO at the time, raising $34.5 billion, but was prevented by China’s communist party from doing so.