Hong Kong’s stablecoin licensing regime, set to start on August 1, is drawing important curiosity from the area’s monetary and tech heavyweights, with native media in China reporting that over 40 purposes have been obtained.
However expectations are being tempered by the fact that the Hong Kong Financial Authority (HKMA) is prone to approve solely a single-digit variety of licenses, in accordance with stories, making this probably the most aggressive regulatory races within the metropolis’s digital finance historical past.
Regardless of the push of curiosity, solely three corporations have been admitted to the HKMA’s stablecoin sandbox thus far, together with a three way partnership between Normal Chartered and Animoca Manufacturers.
In line with an HKMA truth sheet, the sandbox was created to permit corporations with a real and well-developed plan for issuing fiat-referenced stablecoins to have interaction with regulators, refine compliance fashions, and provide suggestions on proposed guidelines.
Admission will not be an endorsement or assure of licensing and sandbox members will nonetheless want to use formally as soon as the complete regime is reside. Nevertheless, the restricted variety of corporations accepted into this testing section affords an early have a look at how slim the approval funnel could also be.
A lot of the corporations getting ready to use are amongst China’s largest banks, cost processors, and web corporations, in accordance with stories.
Normal Chartered’s three way partnership, JD.com’s blockchain division, and Ant Group’s digital finance items are all anticipated to be contenders, with Normal Chartered and JD already sandbox members.
The HKMA’s cautious method appears to be in step with how the Securities and Futures Fee (SFC) has dealt with digital asset platforms, granting simply 11 licenses thus far.
In the course of the SFC licensing course of for digital asset platforms, a variety of high-profile contenders withdrew their purposes, and stories on the time indicated that the regulator found “unsatisfactory practices” at some exchanges.
Learn extra: Hong Kong Units Out Plan to Regulate Crypto, Encourage Tokenization
