Ant Digital is putting $8B in energy assets on the blockchain: Report

Jack Ma’s Ant Digital is tokenizing billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese energy assets on AntChain, with plans to list the tokens on offshore exchanges.

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A unit of the Chinese fintech conglomerate Ant Group is tokenizing more than $8 billion worth of energy infrastructure on its own blockchain.

Ant Digital Technologies, the enterprise solutions arm of the Jack Ma-backed Ant Group, is in the process of tokenizing 60 billion yuan ($8.4 billion) of power infrastructure on its AntChain network, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company has been monitoring power output and outages from 15 million energy devices, including wind turbines and solar panels across China, and uploading this data to their blockchain, according to the report.

Ant Digital has already completed financing for three clean energy projects using asset tokenization, raising about 300 million yuan ($42 million) total, and its next step will be to issue tokens linked to those assets.

One of the company’s future expansion options is putting tokens on decentralized offshore exchanges to create more liquidity for the assets, but this is subject to regulatory approval, according to the anonymous sources.

Ant already tokenizing energy assets

Ant Digital raised 100 million yuan ($14 million) for energy firm Longshine Technology Group in August 2024, and linked 9,000 of its electric charging units to AntChain.

In December, it secured over 200 million yuan ($28 million) for GCL Energy Technology by connecting photovoltaic assets to its blockchain.

Related: Green RWAs recast climate assets as profitable cutting-edge tech

Asset tokenization allows companies to bypass traditional financial intermediaries by issuing digital tokens directly to investors.

This provides several benefits, such as cutting out middlemen like loan officers and underwriters, reducing costs and speeding up funding access, and opening investment opportunities to retail investors typically excluded from infrastructure financing.

Stablecoin ambitions

Ant Group also has grand stablecoin ambitions.

In July, it was reported that Ant Group was working with stablecoin issuer Circle to integrate USDC into its blockchain platform.

Meanwhile, the group’s global division, Ant International, has been leveraging infrastructure for cross-border corporate payments and applying for stablecoin-related licenses.

RWA onchain value at record high

Real-world asset tokenization is still a nascent sector; however, onchain value has almost doubled since the beginning of this year, reaching a record high of $28.4 billion this week, according to RWA.xyz.

More than half of this total is tokenized private credit, while just over a quarter of it is tokenized US Treasurys. Ethereum remains the market-dominant chain for tokenizing RWA with a 57% market share.