HONG KONG – Hong Kong is poised to start issuing the first of its stablecoin licenses next month, the Special Administration Region’s finance secretary said on Wednesday.
Hong Kong will only issue a small batch of licenses initially, Hong Kong’s Paul Chan Mo-Po said Wednesday at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference.
“By granting our licenses, we ensure that licensees have new use cases, a credible and sustainable business model and strong regulatory compliance capabilities,” he said.
Hong Kong is also finalizing its licensing scheme for custody service providers, he said, and is looking to introduce legislation this summer.
“Together with the frameworks already in place, this will ensure that our regulatory regime covers the full gamut of the digital asset ecosystem,” he said.
More broadly, Chan pointed to three trends that are especially maturing at this moment: the growth of real-world tokenized products, increased interaction between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance, and the growing ties between artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assets.
“Tokenization initiatives are moving from proof of concept to real-world implementation supported by more institutional adoption of Treasuries, MMFs and other more traditional financial instruments increasingly being issued on-chain, using digital ledgers to improve settlement efficiency, enabling fractional ownership and unlocking liquidity in assets that have traditionally been less liquid.”
He also pointed to increasing growth in AI.
“As AI agents become able to make and execute decisions independently, we may begin to see the early forms of what some call the machine economy, where AI agents can store and transfer digital assets, pay for services and transact with each other onchain,” Chan said.
