On February 12, Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey (3887.HK), attended the Crypto Finance Forum at the University of Hong Kong and provided an industry perspective on the recent notification regarding new regulations for cryptocurrencies from the People's Bank of China and eight other ministries (Document No. 42). He pointed out that Hong Kong has the opportunity to leverage the advantages of its special administrative region system to surpass London and become the world's second-largest financial center through the key track of RWA.

He noted that from the issuance perspective, the mainland focuses on intermediaries such as accountants and lawyers, emphasizing compliance filing; however, in Hong Kong, it is necessary to submit issuance and trading plans developed by licensed offshore intermediaries and obtain acceptance or trading permission from trading venues. Related arrangements typically require participation from institutions holding Type 1 or VASP licenses to facilitate underwriting and matching with trading venues. This means that Hong Kong's institutional advantage lies in its ability to integrate and execute the design of products from custody, issuance, underwriting, to trading and subsequent compliance operations, forming a complete market closed loop.

Regarding the issuance structure, current Hong Kong RWA mostly adopts an offshore private placement model, with products primarily categorized into "income rights type" and "ownership type." Income rights-type RWA is usually issued via private placements and over-the-counter transactions, which can be undertaken by licensed institutions with Type 1 qualifications and familiarity with over-the-counter market rules; ownership-type products, if involving stock tokenization, require further institutional capacity to transition to public offerings and publicly traded markets. Regardless of the structure adopted, the core premise is always licensed compliance and trading venue permission. Compared to other jurisdictions, Hong Kong's advantage lies in its clear licensing system and mature market infrastructure, which can simultaneously support private placements, underwriting, and trading execution to achieve a closed-loop operation from issuance to circulation of products. Overall, the market primarily consists of institutional investors at this stage, but Hong Kong has left institutional interfaces for broader market participation in the future.

In terms of the trading ecosystem, he pointed out that current RWA mainly adopts peer-to-peer over-the-counter trading rather than exchange continuous bidding and matching. Blockchain technology has inherent advantages in peer-to-peer trading scenarios, which can enhance settlement efficiency, reduce counterparty risk, and improve trading transparency. Hong Kong's unique advantage is that its institutional benefits provide a realistic foundation for the compliant embedding of on-chain peer-to-peer trading models. In the future, it is expected to reshape the trading infrastructure form of RWA.

He also noted that against the backdrop of high dollar interest rates, market expectations for the returns of RWA products have significantly increased, posing real challenges for cross-border issuance of high-quality assets. In the future, if RWA can combine with mechanisms such as DeFi and margin financing under compliance premises, it will open up greater innovative space. However, the tokenization of equity-type assets still faces related restrictions under securities regulations, requiring regulatory authorities to further clarify or optimize institutional arrangements.

Xiao Feng stated that in 2008, Time magazine summarized the important positions of New York, London, and Hong Kong in the global financial system as "New-Lune-Harbor." Now, RWA is the key track for Hong Kong to achieve a "shortcut" and must seize the window period to transform "New-Lune-Harbor" into "New (New York) Harbor (Hong Kong) Lune (London)," surpassing London to become the world's second-largest international financial center.

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