HONG KONG – Hong Kong is ready to issue its first stablecoin licenses next month, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s Financial Secretary said on Wednesday.
Hong Kong will only issue a small batch of licenses initially, Hong Kong’s Paul Chan Mo-Po told CoinDesk’s Hong Kong Consensus Conference on Wednesday.
“When issuing licenses, we ensure licensees have novel use cases, a reliable and sustainable business model and strong regulatory compliance capabilities,” he said.
Hong Kong is also working on finalizing a licensing regime for hosting providers and hopes to introduce legislation this summer, he said.
“Coupled with the framework already in place, this will ensure our regulatory regime fully covers teams across the digital asset ecosystem,” he said.
More broadly, Chan identified three trends that are particularly ripe at the moment: the growth of tokenized products in the real world, the growing interaction between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance, and the growing connection between artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assets.
“Tokenization initiatives are moving from proof-of-concept to real-world deployment, supported by increased institutional adoption. Government bonds, money market funds and other more traditional financial instruments are increasingly issued on-chain, leveraging digital ledgers to improve settlement efficiency, enable fractional ownership and unlock liquidity in traditionally illiquid assets.”
He also pointed to the continued growth of artificial intelligence.
“As AI agents become capable of independently making and executing decisions, we may begin to see early forms of what some call a machine economy, in which AI agents can hold and transfer digital assets, pay for services, and transact with each other on-chain,” Chen said.