Hong Kong has missed its own March timeline for HKD stablecoin licensing, with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) yet to approve any issuers despite public signals that the rollout would begin last month.
At Consensus Hong Kong in February, Finance Minister Paul Chan Mo-po said licenses would start being issued in March as part of the city’s push to position itself as a regulated hub for stablecoins and tokenized finance. The lack of approvals so far pushes that timeline into April and raises questions about how quickly the framework will move from policy to implementation.
“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 at CoinDesk’s Hong Kong conference.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported in March that HSBC and a joint venture between Standard Chartered and Animoca were expected to be some of the first recipients of stablecoin licenses.
HSBC and Standard Chartered are two of the city’s note-issuing banks, a status that ties them directly to the Hong Kong dollar’s issuance framework and underlines how closely the stablecoin regime is linked to existing monetary infrastructure.
This system dates back to 1846, when private banks began issuing currency backed by silver deposits in the absence of a colonial central bank.
Today, each note-issuing bank deposits US dollars into the government’s Exchange Fund at the fixed rate of HK$7.80 per dollar. dollar and receives in return promissory notes against which it prints banknotes.
HKMA CEO Eddie Yue drew the parallel in a December 2023 blog post.
Before 1935, banknotes issued by commercial banks in exchange for deposited silver were a form of “private money,” Yue wrote, and stablecoins serve as their blockchain-based equivalent — tokens with stable value that can serve as an on-chain medium of exchange.
A spokesman for the HKMA would not give a reason for the delay.
“HKMA is actively pursuing the licensing issue and will announce further details in due course,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk.
