The Hong Kong Securities Futures Commission (SFC) has reportedly decided to release crypto exchange licensing guidelines next month, according to reporting from Bloomberg on April 27. The outlet cited comments by the SFC’s CEO Julia Leung, who stated that the commission’s consultation process on licensing received over 150 responses by interested crypto-related entities. Apparently, some crypto trading platforms have already started offering services to investors under the commission’s regulations. An example of entities that have already received an SFC license to practice in Hong Kong are OSL and Hashkey Group.
This development comes on the back of the High Court of Hong Kong making a landmark legal decision in mid-April when it recognized crypto to be “legal property” in a legal battle involving the now-extinct crypto-exchange platform Gatecoin, which ceased operations in 2019. The judge working the case reportedly decided that crypto has “property attributes”, and therefore should be dealt with as such. This is an important milestone in the Chinese bureaucracy’s path toward re-opening their doors to crypto business, as discusses in this recent article we published.
