China Carbon Neutrality (01372): The world's first compliant issuance of 500 million carbon coins

According to Zhitong Finance App, China Carbon Neutrality (01372) announced that Global Carbon Asset Management Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Group, has gone through strict compliance reviews and passed DigiFT, a licensed digital asset trading platform in Singapore, using 500,000 tons of carbon credits certified by certified carbon standards (VCS) as the underlying asset. Compliant hosting, issuance, and distribution of a total of 500 million carbon coins (Carbon Coins). The offering relies on DigiFT's regulated real-world asset (“RWA”) tokenization and trading infrastructure to enable on-chain and compliant transfer of carbon credit assets. This is the world's first compliant carbon coin based on authoritative international carbon standards. It is also the first time that VCS carbon credit is used as the underlying asset to be issued on an overseas regulated on-chain exchange.

As the global climate governance process accelerates, the carbon market, as a core financial instrument that leverages low-carbon transformation, is facing bottlenecks such as lack of liquidity, high costs, and difficulty in penetrating regulations under traditional trading models. This release transforms VCS carbon credit assets certified by international authorities into digital tokens supported by blockchain technology. It not only reshapes the carbon asset transaction link from a technical level, but also explores a new paradigm of green asset circulation from an institutional level. This milestone marks the Group's breakthrough progress in the field of RWA digital asset tokenization. It also means that digital carbon assets and green finance innovation have entered a new stage of large-scale implementation. It has landmark strategic value for achieving global carbon neutrality goals and building a green economy system. It is a benchmark practice in responding to the global climate consensus and innovating green value circulation paths.

⚫ The landmark significance of the world's first carbon coin issued on an overseas regulated on-chain exchange: reshaping the underlying logic of carbon market development and leading a new global low-carbon development ecosystem

As the world's first digital carbon asset product issued on an overseas regulated on-chain exchange, this carbon coin offering broke through the geographical boundaries and morphological shackles of traditional carbon asset transactions and established a closed chain of “carbon asset authorization - digital certificate standardization - circulation liberalization”. This innovation not only provides a traceable, separable, and transferable standardized value carrier for the global carbon market, but also builds a bridge for the deep integration of green finance and the digital economy, provides a replicable and promotable implementation model for the market to advance carbon neutrality strategies, pushes global climate governance from policy-driven to a new stage of market-driven and technology-driven, and helps build a more efficient, inclusive, and resilient global low-carbon development ecosystem.

⚫ Core support for underlying VCS carbon assets: building a strong value foundation for global circulation

The underlying asset of this carbon coin issuance is a carbon credit asset certified by VCS. The standard was co-founded by the United Nations Climate Organization and other international authorities in 2005 and managed by the non-profit international organization Verra. It is the most widely applied and market-recognized voluntary carbon emission reduction mechanism in the world. It covers many key areas such as forestry carbon sinks, renewable energy, and energy efficiency improvement. It has been incorporated into the carbon emission reduction system by 96 countries and regions. The cumulative emission reduction volume exceeds 1.2 billion tons, accounting for 60% to 70% of the global carbon sink trading volume. Relying on the international generality and authority of VCS carbon assets and superimposing the Group's strong VCS carbon asset reserves, the carbon coins issued this time naturally have global circulation properties, providing a stable and credible value anchor for carbon trading, breaking the fragmentation of national carbon markets, and helping to form a unified and open global carbon trading system.

⚫ The innovative value of the dual-chain technology architecture: controllable regulation and efficient unification of the market to reshape the new ecosystem of carbon trading

The current carbon coin issuance is based on the underlying structure of the Green Letter Chain Alliance chain developed independently by the Group and public chain technology, which has achieved organic unification of “controllable supervision” and “efficient market”. As a financial-level trusted collaborative network, the Green Letter Chain uses a four-in-one architecture of “penetrating supervision, data sharing, privacy protection and credit empowerment” to achieve traceability and immutability throughout the entire life cycle of carbon assets, from project development, certification and issuance to transaction circulation, providing regulators with an immediate and accurate supervisory gripper; superimposing the transparent circulation characteristics of the public chain, it completes transaction matching and settlement through smart contracts, reducing the cycle of several weeks of traditional carbon transactions to the level of minutes, greatly reducing transaction costs.

Through the decentralized distribution and circulation mechanism of regulated digital asset trading platforms, it not only guarantees the transparency and fairness of transactions, but also opens up a docking channel between global capital and high-quality carbon projects through cross-chain interconnection technology, reshaping the foundation of trust in the carbon market and driving carbon trading from a centralized, high-threshold niche market to a decentralized, inclusive market with extensive participation.

⚫ The core value of increased liquidity: Launching the potential for inclusive development of the carbon market

Through digital segmentation and compliant circulation design, the current carbon coin issuance directly hit the industry pain points of “concentrated transactions, insufficient liquidity, and high investor threshold” of traditional carbon assets. Carbon coins use standardized units to share underlying carbon assets, lower the entry threshold and expand the scope of investor accessibility under the compliance framework; using the location advantage of Singapore's international financial hub and distributed blockchain technology, through DigiFT's regulated trading platform, they can achieve 24-hour global uninterrupted transactions, attract the participation of multiple qualified investors and entities that meet regulatory requirements, and significantly improve the liquidity and value discovery efficiency of the carbon market. This transformation not only makes carbon assets a green investment target that can be more easily reached and allocated by investors, but also empowers enterprises to flexibly manage their own carbon assets, optimize emission reduction strategies and carbon cost structures, and enhance the sustainable development image and market competitiveness of enterprises while meeting regulatory compliance requirements.

⚫ Innovative value empowered by financial attributes: unblocking a virtuous circular system of green capital and helping the global carbon-neutral ecosystem development

The launch of carbon coins has fully launched and released the financial properties of carbon assets. As a standardized digital asset, carbon coins have the characteristics of financial products with clear pricing, easy transactions, and controllable risk. They can explore diverse application scenarios such as carbon pledge financing, asset preservation, and value-added, filling the tool gap in the carbon financial derivatives market. By quantifying ecological value into tradable financial value, carbon coins break through the barriers between green capital and physical emission reduction projects: they not only provide a stable source of funding for emission reduction projects and solve the “difficult and expensive financing” dilemma of green projects; they also provide investors with investment choices that balance environmental and economic benefits, and promote green capital to form a virtuous circle of “investment - emission reduction - return - reinvestment” to help the high-quality development of the global green industry.

⚫ The synergetic value of ecological co-construction: leading a win-win pattern for global low-carbon development

This carbon coin offering is not a single product innovation; it is a key step for the Group to build a low-carbon ecosystem with a full chain of “emission reduction project development - carbon asset certification - digital token conversion - ecological value backfeeding”. In this ecosystem, emission reduction projects can obtain continuous operating capital to accelerate implementation and technology iteration; investors can participate in transactions to share green development dividends and complete green asset allocation; regulators rely on blockchain technology to achieve transparent supervision throughout the process to improve the effectiveness of carbon market governance; qualified investors such as individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, and institutional investors that meet regulatory requirements can use convenient digital operations to write off carbon coins to offset their own carbon emissions and implement the concept of a low-carbon lifestyle. The deep participation of various actors eventually formed a virtuous circle of “emission reduction is profitable, investment has a basis, and participation has a path”, laying a solid foundation for market-based and inclusive practices for advancing global carbon neutrality goals.

In the future, the Group will continue to expand application scenarios for carbon coins in the fields of new energy, circular economy, green supply chain, etc., promote their deep integration with green consumption, green travel, and green production, and work with global partners to build an open, collaborative and win-win global low-carbon ecosystem, and inject new momentum for sustainable development into the global carbon neutrality business.

The board of directors believes that the core significance of issuing carbon coins on overseas regulated on-chain exchanges is to inject the three core elements of transparency, efficiency and accessibility into the global carbon market. This is not only a technological upgrade, but also a model revolution in the carbon market. It is expected to solve the trust crisis and liquidity problems that have plagued the carbon market for a long time, and guide global capital to invest more efficiently in key areas to combat climate change. The issuance of carbon coins has further expanded the Group's application boundaries in green digital asset tokenization, and is an important milestone in the Group's implementation of the concept of green development. It is of positive significance in promoting standardization of carbon asset transactions and innovation in green asset financing. It will also strongly promote the construction of a global green asset finance ecosystem and promote high-quality development of the industry. The Company believes that deep participation in the field of green digital technology will bring sustainable business growth and long-term financial returns to the Group, lay a solid foundation for the Group's global low-carbon business layout, and further consolidate and enhance the overall interests of the Group and its shareholders.