Hong Kong authorities are moving toward issuing the city’s first stablecoin licenses, with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority targeting March for an initial round.
Market expectations, however, have been carefully managed. Based on regulatory signals and industry briefings, the first batch is widely expected to be limited, likely to no more than three to five licenses.
This measured pace is generally interpreted by market participants as reflecting how the HKMA intends to position stablecoins within the financial system.
Rather than treating them as an extension of the crypto market, regulators appear to be framing stablecoins as part of Hong Kong’s financial infrastructure, subject to standards closer to those applied to payment systems and deposit-taking institutions.
That interpretation is reinforced by the regulator’s own disclosures. HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue has confirmed that the authority has received 36 applications from prospective stablecoin issuers.
The review process is said to be nearing completion, with some applicants asked to provide additional detail on specific use cases, risk management frameworks and the composition and custody of reserve assets.
While the HKMA is working toward issuing the first licenses in March 2026, Yue has emphasized that the initial number “will certainly not be large,” with stability and risk control taking precedence over speed.
At the same time, some market participants note that an overly small number of licenses could, at least initially, lead to a more concentrated market structure, particularly if stablecoin issuance becomes embedded in core payment or settlement flows.
Within this context, market attention has increasingly focused on a small group of potential early candidates, not as presumptive winners, but as reference points for how the regime may be applied in practice.
Anchorpoint Financial Limited, a joint venture involving Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Animoca Brands and Hong Kong Telecom, has publicly stated its intention to apply for a license and to issue a Hong Kong dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Its cross-sector ownership structure, combining banking, technology and telecommunications, together with early engagement with regulators, has made it one of the most frequently cited potential applicants.
HashKey Group, another early advocate of the regime, has also drawn market attention. While the group has not disclosed a specific stablecoin product, it has emphasized the flexibility of Hong Kong’s framework and its readiness to proceed once licensing formally opens.
Industry observers generally view this positioning as an expression of confidence in regulatory direction rather than speculation on near-term outcomes.
RD InnoTech is also commonly mentioned in industry discussions. Backed by RD Technologies—founded in 2020 by former HKMA chief executive Norman Chan—the firm has been developing HKDR, a Hong Kong dollar–referenced stablecoin, alongside its regulatory and compliance infrastructure.
Its explicit focus on Hong Kong dollar–based issuance, combined with early and visible regulatory engagement, places it among the more credible candidates should licenses be issued in stages.
By contrast, expectations surrounding China-affiliated firms, including JD Coinlink Technology (Hong Kong), are notably more restrained.
In light of policy signals and official statements from the People’s Bank of China regarding stablecoins and related digital currency activities, market participants generally do not assume such entities will feature prominently in the initial licensing phase.
These market expectations help clarify how Hong Kong’s approach differs from that of other major jurisdictions.
In Singapore, regulatory emphasis has so far been placed on experimentation rather than licensing.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has overseen extensive pilots involving tokenized bank liabilities and government securities, but has yet to roll out a clearly bounded, retail-facing stablecoin issuer regime.
This has enabled technical progress within the banking system while leaving open questions about who will ultimately be authorized to issue stablecoins at scale.
The United Arab Emirates has taken a more directive approach. Under its payment token framework, locally issued, dirham-backed stablecoins are explicitly encouraged, while foreign-currency stablecoins face restrictions on their use in domestic payments. The result is regulatory clarity and speed, but also a framework shaped by a clear preference for national currency instruments.
The European Union’s MiCA regime offers a different model. Under MiCA, issuers of asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens are subject to harmonized capital, reserve and disclosure requirements across member states.
While this creates a single market with legal certainty, it also imposes a relatively uniform rulebook, leaving less room for jurisdiction-specific currency arrangements.
What merits closer attention is the currency structure itself. Market expectations point to Hong Kong-licensed stablecoins being denominated in Hong Kong dollars, a currency operating under a long-standing peg to the US dollar.
This design means that a Hong Kong stablecoin is neither a simple replication of existing US dollar stablecoins nor an independent monetary experiment.
Instead, it functions as a digital settlement instrument operating within the broader dollar-based system while remaining outside the direct perimeter of US regulatory authority.
For institutional users, this distinction is significant. It positions Hong Kong–licensed stablecoins differently from US dollar stablecoins subject to fragmented federal and state oversight and differently again from euro-denominated tokens issued under MiCA’s pan-European framework.
The emphasis is not on creating a new monetary instrument, but on providing a regulated digital settlement layer compatible with existing international financial arrangements.
This also helps explain why the HKMA appears in no hurry to expand the number of licenses. The objective, according to prevailing market interpretation, is not early scale but early credibility, using a small number of closely supervised issuers to observe how stablecoins behave under real operating conditions, including liquidity stress and cross-border use.
In this sense, the limited first round is best understood not as a constraint, but as a signal. Hong Kong’s stablecoin initiative is not positioned as a challenge to sovereign currencies or to the existing monetary order.
Rather, it reflects an effort to offer global capital a highly institutionalized digital settlement tool, one designed to operate squarely within the boundaries of the current system and to earn trust incrementally rather than by volume.
Jeffrey Sze is ambassador for arts, culture and tourism of Reichenau and chairman of Habsburg Asia. He serves as general partner of Archduke United LPF and Asia Empower LPF, focusing on cross-border institutional investment at the intersection of art, finance and regulated digital innovation, including AI and digital assets. In 2017, he was involved in securing one of Switzerland’s early cryptocurrency exchange licenses.