Sam Cooling
Hong Kong’s long-harboured ambition of becoming the world’s premier crypto hub is on the cusp of reality with the backing of an unlikely partner: China.
Sources close to Bloomberg have revealed that in recent months, officials from China’s Liaison Office have become a big presence in Hong Kong’s crypto scene.
Now frequent attendees of most events and conferences, these representatives are reportedly fostering a friendly relationship – exchanging business cards and WeChat usernames.
Reportedly, their main focus seems to be on clearing up doubts about Beijing’s hard-line stance against crypto. However, requests to monitor projects for updates and serial follow up calls could hint that there is more at play.
It is rumoured that the real reason for this presence is to show laissez faire support for the city’s plans to become a testing ground for digital assets.
Crypto Migration To Hong Kong
And these rumours are making waves – with an apparent local migration of crypto business operators from China into Hong Kong.
This includes none other than Justin Sun – the silver-tongued founder of the TRON DAO. Once an exile from Beijing’s hostile crypto policy, Sun now seems to be excited about the possibilities – in a recent interview he hinted at Beijing’s new approach to the HK crypto sector.
“The changing attitude of the Hong Kong SAR government towards crypto signals a nod from the Chinese central government granting pilot status to HK for some forward-looking experiments on how can crypto be best adopted and localized for the huge Chinese market at large,” explained Sun.
“I’m very bullish on the outlook for crypto in the greater China region for the next decade.”
Another clue that Beijing might be encouraging this development comes from Yi Gang. The Governor of the People’s Bank of China has given a number of talks and presentations in Hong Kong about CBDCs over the past 6 months.
Breaking!
Hong Kong to allow citizens trade large cap crypto assets
Oh! The Chinese wave is upon us pic.twitter.com/8n4iDjJlfE
— Admiano (@Admiano) February 20, 2023
Beijing Approval Ignites HK Crypto Stock Rally
The bullish sentiment surround this news has led to a spike in Chinese crypto tokens and stocks – OKG Technology Holdings (one of the world’s largest blockchain firms) saw stock rally 22% in the wake of the news.
All of this has fuelled an absolute frenzy in crypto markets for so-called ‘Chinese coins’. The latest trend in a series of fad narratives that have swept the market in 2023 including AI and ZK-centric technologies.
This comes following Monday’s announcement that Hong Kong will be green-lighting retail investors to invest in Bitcoin and Ether.
Major cryptocurrency projects are expected to be approved for trading on exchanges licensed by China’s Securities and Futures Commission. The new Virtual Asset Exchange licensing regime is anticipated to launch in June.
Investors will be subjected to gatekeeping safeguards including crypto knowledge tests, risk profile assessments, and limits imposed on allowable portfolio allocations/exposure.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Sam Cooling.
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