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Opinion
What Hong Kong’s conservative stablecoin licence roll-out reveals
Hong Kong is building a bank-led digital money system, not a cryptocurrency free-for-all
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Kun Tian is a senior lecturer in marketing and analytics at Kent Business School, UK, and a fellow at the Taihe Institute.
The most revealing fact about Hong Kong’s stablecoin launch is not that licences were issued. It is who got them, and who did not. By handing the first approvals to HSBC and the Standard Chartered-led joint venture Anchorpoint Financial, regulators made clear from the start that digital money in Hong Kong will be bank-led.
That choice matters because Hong Kong is not trying to become Asia’s easiest venue for cryptocurrency experimentation. Rather, it is trying to become the most credible place to use stablecoins. In practice, that means digital money will be allowed to grow, but only inside a system dominated by banks, large compliance teams and institutions that regulators trust.
The slower roll-out underlined the point. The first batch had long been expected by the end of March, yet regulators delayed things instead of rushing in. When the approvals finally came, the winners were not cryptocurrency-native challengers. They were bank-linked operators with balance-sheet credibility, regulatory experience and distribution power.
That’s not a technical detail. It is the point.
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