Bank of Communications Hong Kong Branch recently issued a US $300 million unsecured floating rate digital bond with a maturity of three years. This is the first digital native bond of Bank of China, issued using the HSBC Orion digital asset platform and cleared through the Hong Kong Central Securities Depository (CMU). Moody's has given the bond a preliminary A2 rating, equivalent to a traditional bond issue, despite its negative outlook on China's sovereign rating. Moody's believes that the risks posed by blockchain have been effectively mitigated because the Orion platform uses a private permissioned blockchain and cash transactions are settled off-chain, avoiding the impact of platform failures on payments.