Hong Kong is working hard to supervise the cryptocurrency market in an appropriate manner so that technologies like Web3 can reach their full potential.
Despite the current industry crisis brought on by the FTX collapse, the Hong Kong government is still committed to building out the infrastructure for cryptocurrencies.
Paul Chan, the financial secretary for Hong Kong, claims that in 2023, local regulators and the government are willing to work with fintech and cryptocurrency startups.
Chan stated that Hong Kong has evolved into a foundation connecting high quality virtual asset enterprises while speaking at an event organized by the government-run incubator Cyberport.
The financial secretary claimed that during the last two months, companies involved in the cryptocurrency industry have made many requests to the Hong Kong government to establish their worldwide headquarters there. Chan noted that several business organizations have shown a desire to increase their operations in Hong Kong or to list on regional markets.
The official claims that Hong Kong is making every effort to supervise the cryptocurrency market in an appropriate manner in order to unleash the potential of technologies like Web3.
He added that in December, Hong Kong's legislature established legislation creating a licensing framework for companies that provide virtual asset services. The new legal framework is intended to give bitcoin exchanges the same level of market recognition as the one that is now applied to regular financial institutions.
Chen allegedly mentioned several pilot projects being carried out by Hong Kong authorities and officials to examine the potential benefits of virtual assets and look into related uses during the event. He mentioned that one of the projects entails the Hong Kong government issuing tokenized green bonds for institutional investors to purchase.
Over the past year, Hong Kong has gradually reaffirmed its support for cryptocurrencies, positioning itself to overtake all other nations in the field by 2022.
Hong Kong introduced its first two exchange-traded funds (ETF) for bitcoin futures in the middle of December, and they raised more than $70 million before going public. The announcement that Hong Kong is willing to differentiate its approach to regulating cryptocurrencies from the Chinese crypto ban that will take effect in 2021 was made by the president of the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong in October, just before the event.
