Hong Kong licensing, stablecoin landscape changes: Who is reshaping the next generation of the financial landscape?

This article is selected from the Fudan Financial Review
Author: Gao Huasheng, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Vice Dean of the International Finance School at Fudan University, Professor of Finance, Doctoral Supervisor, long-term researcher on crypto assets, author of a series of works including "Stablecoins: The Future of Digital Finance"; Xu Bo, Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Finance School of Fudan University

On April 10, 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) officially issued the first batch of stablecoin issuer licenses to Anchor Financial Technology Limited and Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited.

With this, Hong Kong has basically completed the institutional closed loop of "legislation - review - licensing" for fiat-backed stablecoins, and has taken the lead in advancing stablecoin regulation to the implementation and business preparation stage.

The importance of this event lies not only in the issuance of the first batch of licenses by Hong Kong but also in the changing functional positioning of stablecoins in Hong Kong. They are no longer just auxiliary tools in crypto asset trading but are explicitly embedded in real financial activities such as cross-border payments, local payments, tokenized asset trading, and programmable finance. In other words, Hong Kong's promotion of stablecoins is not aimed at creating a new speculative narrative but is attempting to shape them as part of the digital financial infrastructure.

From the composition of the first batch of licensed entities, this institutional signal is particularly clear. Anchor Financial Technology was jointly established by Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Hong Kong Telecommunications, and Animoca Brands, while HSBC became another licensed institution in the first batch. This combination indicates that Hong Kong's first stablecoins are not simply the legalization of "crypto-native projects" but rather a systematic integration of bank credit, payment gateways, and on-chain capabilities.

It is also noteworthy that before the deadline for the first batch of applications, the HKMA received applications from 36 institutions but ultimately issued licenses to only 2, resulting in a licensing rate of about 5.6%, with a clear indication that the number of future licenses will remain "very limited." This shows that Hong Kong is not following a loose expansion route but rather a high-threshold, selective admission approach.

The attention to Hong Kong's licensing is also due to its "first-mover advantage" not being just a slogan. On May 21, 2025, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the "Stablecoin Bill"; on May 30, the bill was published in the gazette; on August 1, the "Stablecoin Ordinance" officially took effect; and by April 10, 2026, the first batch of licenses was officially issued, completing the full chain of "legislation - review - licensing."

In contrast, while the regulations related to stablecoins in the EU's MiCA will apply from June 30, 2024, the overall framework will not fully apply until December 30, 2024; the UK FCA's new crypto asset business application window will not open until September 30, 2026, with new regulations expected to take effect on October 25, 2027. At least in terms of the pace of institutional implementation, Hong Kong has already gained an advantage among major international financial centers.

More importantly, Hong Kong does not only have licenses but also scenarios. As early as February 2023, the Hong Kong government completed the issuance of the first tokenized green bond worth HKD 800 million, and in February 2024, it completed the issuance of approximately HKD 6 billion in digital green bonds, covering currencies such as HKD, RMB, USD, and EUR. Meanwhile, the first phase of e-HKD has attracted 16 institutions to participate, covering 6 types of application scenarios; Project Ensemble Sandbox has also been launched and is gradually entering a new phase supporting real value transactions. In other words, the issuance of licenses in Hong Kong is not starting from scratch but is based on a set of on-chain financial experiments and infrastructure that have already taken initial shape.

Of course, the importance of Hong Kong's licensing should not be simply understood as it is about to rewrite the global stablecoin landscape. The current global stablecoin market has a total market value of USD 317 billion, having grown by over 50% since early 2025; however, structurally, over 90% of fiat-backed stablecoins are still pegged to the US dollar, with USDT and USDC accounting for about 93% of the total market value.

This means that on-chain finance has not fundamentally rewritten the global monetary power structure but has, to a considerable extent, continued the dominant position of US dollar credit, US dollar assets, and US dollar liquidity. The breakthrough in Hong Kong is more about exploring a more institutionalized, verifiable, and implementable development path for non-US dollar stablecoins rather than challenging the US dollar in the short term.

In the broader context of China's digital finance, the true significance of Hong Kong's licensing may not lie in whether the mainland will immediately replicate a set of RMB stablecoin systems but in further highlighting a more layered arrangement: domestically, using digital RMB to safeguard the bottom line of legal currency, retail payments, and regulation, while overseas, using Hong Kong as an offshore institutional testing ground to explore the application boundaries of compliant stablecoins in cross-border payments, on-chain settlements, and tokenized asset trading.

Digital RMB leans more towards official leadership and domestic institutional construction, while licensed stablecoins in Hong Kong are closer to offshore markets, international payments, and on-chain trading scenarios. The two are not necessarily in a substitutive relationship but may form a layered advancement and mutually complementary pattern.

However, necessary restraint should also be maintained. An institutional closed loop does not equate to a market closed loop, and the issuance of the first batch of licenses does not mean that the competitive landscape has been set. Whether the HKD stablecoin can truly operate effectively still depends on whether it can form a sufficiently strong network effect, payment demand, and scenario stickiness. Especially in the context where US dollar stablecoins have established a clear first-mover advantage, whether the Hong Kong model can transition from a "high-quality template" to a "system with significant scale impact" still needs time to be tested.

Overall, the issuance of the first batch of stablecoin licenses in Hong Kong is indeed an important milestone in the evolution of global stablecoin regulation. What is truly worth paying attention to is not how much market achievement Hong Kong has already made, but that it has taken the lead in providing an institutional sample that can be observed, tested, and iterated.

Issuing only 2 licenses out of 36 applications, Hong Kong's step is not one of widespread flooding but rather a high-threshold selection for the next generation of digital financial infrastructure. Whether this path can be successfully navigated in the future depends not on how many licenses are issued but on whether institutional credit, real scenarios, payment networks, and on-chain asset circulation can truly be connected into a system.