Hong Kong’s Hashkey among city’s first to kick off retail crypto exchange - South China Morning Post

sutitong.blogspot.com

One of Hong Kong’s first licensed cryptocurrency exchanges has officially started accepting retail users, allowing them to trade the two largest crypto tokens directly with fiat currencies amid the city’s push to boost the virtual asset industry.

The Hashkey Exchange opened up to retail investors in Hong Kong, enabling them to buy bitcoin and ether with US dollar deposits, the company said on Monday.

Retail trading of the two cryptocurrencies using Hong Kong dollars will be allowed “within a week or two”, HashKey Group COO Livio Weng said.

The launch comes nearly a month after HashKey and OSL, the only two local exchanges previously licensed by the city’s Securities Futures Commission (SFC) to offer virtual asset trading services to professional investors, said that their existing licences had been upgraded to allow them to take retail investors.

Crypto-mining official in China given life in prison

In October last year Hong Kong announced a major push to develop its virtual asset industry, with the goal of attracting businesses back to the city, and becoming a global crypto hub. In the following months, the city laid out rules that allowed centralised crypto exchanges to serve retail customers provided they have a licence issued by the SFC.

Licensing requirements for retail-facing exchanges in the city cover a broad range of areas including user onboarding, asset custody, cybersecurity and corporate governance, as well as intensive operational and financial investment, experts have said.

The offerings for retail investors will be limited to the largest crypto tokens, while derivatives and stablecoins are not allowed.

Advertisement

Hashkey is aiming to sign up 500,000 to 1 million retail users globally by the end of this year, and more than 10 million by 2025, Weng said at a press briefing on Monday.

He declined to give an estimate for the number of Hong Kong-based retail investors it was targeting to sign up this year, adding that the figure would be “conservative” as they are less willing to trade amid a bear market. However, the firm estimates that 1 million people in the city are cryptocurrency investors.

Hashkey is now working with two banks on supporting user deposits and withdrawals, according to the company. One is ZA Bank, Hong Kong’s biggest virtual bank, while the other is a note-issuing bank in the city that it cannot name at the moment, Weng said on Monday.

Representations of cryptocurrencies are seen in this illustration photo, August 10, 2022. Photo: Reuters

Hashkey said earlier this month that it had partnered with Standard Chartered Bank “to provide users with convenient fiat currency deposit and withdrawal services”.

As Hong Kong pushes ahead with embracing the volatile crypto sector when countries like the US are tightening oversight, the city’s securities regulator also warned against platforms making false claims about compliance.

Advertisement

Some unlicensed virtual asset trading platforms claim they have submitted applications to the SFC that allow them to operate in the city legally, but have not actually done so, the regulator said earlier this month.

Investors trading on unregulated virtual asset exchanges risk “losing their entire investment” held on the platform if it “ceases operation, collapses, is hacked”, or “suffers from any misappropriation of assets”, the SFC reminded investors.

Advertisement

Adblock test (Why?)

"exchange" - Google News
August 28, 2023 at 09:00PM
https://ift.tt/cRVqsZY

Hong Kong’s Hashkey among city’s first to kick off retail crypto exchange - South China Morning Post
"exchange" - Google News
https://ift.tt/hQSe3mT
https://ift.tt/NeoqQic
Exchange

Bagikan Berita Ini