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The financial secretary also discussed Hong Kong’s effort in developing Web3 and the cryptocurrency market.
Hong Kong’s senior official, Christopher Hui, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, visited some European countries to promote his country’s edge in the financial market and the innovative technology that the Asian region is embarking on.
During his European tour, Hui participated in two forums: Money 20/20 in Amsterdam and the South Summit in Madrid. At these events, Hui emphasized Hong Kong’s (HK) role as an entry point to the Asian market. He urged business owners and startups to take advantage of his region’s favorable financial conditions, such as free capital movement, an open and friendly business environment, a simple and competitive tax system, as well as a diverse talent pool.
The financial secretary also discussed Hong Kong’s effort to develop Web3 and the cryptocurrency market. He elaborated on the region’s newly signed virtual asset regulations, such as implementing a licensing form for virtual asset trading platforms and creating guidelines for virtual asset businesses, including stablecoin issuers and other trading services.
The secretary mentioned HKs achievement in government bond financing with the issuance of two batches of tokenized green bonds. The first batch, released last year, was the world’s first issuance by a government. The second batch, released earlier this year, was a multi-currency offering amassing $770 million, representing the world’s first issuance of multi-currency government green bonds in digital native form.
Hui also used the European tour to promote international tax cooperation. He showed his concern about Hong Kong’s inclusion on Portugal’s list of “obviously preferential tax jurisdictions,” which poses a higher tax risk for HK companies operating there. Hui urged Portugal to remove Hong Kong from the list immediately.
Pioneering Crypto ETF Innovation in Asia
One of the topics he discussed was Hong Kong’s launch of the first batch of six virtual asset spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Asia, stating that HK was the pioneer in implementing an in-kind redemption mechanism for these ETFs, which provides investors with flexibility when they subscribe to or redeem their ETF.
However, despite these features, the performance of HK’s ETFs has yet to meet up with that of the United States. The three Hong Kong spot bitcoin ETFs were only able to attain a total daily trading volume of $6.67 million on Tuesday, compared to $2.35 million on Friday and $6.08 million on Thursday. On the other hand, United States 11-spot BTC ETFs recorded $1.1 billion in total trading volume on Monday, following Friday’s $2.51 billion.
Despite still lagging in terms of trading volume, Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Siu maintained his optimistic view about the future of the Hong Kong Crypto ETF, revealing that authorities in the region are reviewing the possibility of adding staking within the spot ether ETF, which could serve as an advantage for the country’s digital currency.
