One of the largest financial conglomerates in the world, HSBC, has registered trademarks for non-interchangeable tokens and metaverses

The British financial Institution HSBC has registered trademarks on the NFT marketplace and the metaverse. Patent attorney Mike Kondoudis announced this on his Twitter page. According to the description of the trademarks, the bank registered the trademarks with the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office on December 15.

Source: twitter.com
The description of the applications refers to the bank's plans to develop virtual goods in the metaverse. The British bank is also interested in processing transactions with virtual payment cards. In addition to metaverses, HSBC also wants to place financial services in the turnover of non-interchangeable tokens (NFT). However, there is no talk about any specific developments of the bank yet. Officially, HSBC also decided not to comment on trademarks.

HSBC's interest in the metaverse can be traced back to the spring of 2022. Then HSBC bought a virtual piece of land in The Sandbox to develop gaming initiatives in the field of esports. According to Suresh Balaji, head of marketing in the Asia-Pacific region of HSBC, the bank sees "great potential" for creating new experiences using gaming platforms. The financial details of the transaction are still unknown.

HSBC is considered one of the main skeptical banks of the cryptocurrency industry. For example, he was the first financial institution that banned clients from trading MicroStrategy shares due to the purchase of billions of dollars worth of bitcoin by the latter. In mac 2021, the head of HSBC's European division, Noel Quinn, said that he would not support cryptocurrencies and launch a platform for trading them.

Despite the skepticism about cryptocurrencies, the bank is actively testing the distributed registry technology. For example, in November, Wells Fargo, together with HSBC, reported on the processing of financial transactions for more than $200 billion using a distributed registry. This is reported in a joint press release.