Hong Kong on Friday granted the first two stablecoin issuance licenses to Anchorpoint Financial, a Standard Chartered-led consortium that includes HSBC and the Animoca brand.
The approval by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the central bank for the Hong Kong region, marks the first batch under the Stablecoin Ordinance, which came into effect in August 2025.
“We look forward to the issuer starting operations according to plan and exploring growth opportunities while appropriately managing risks,” HKMA CEO Eddie Yue said in a statement on Friday.
“We hope that the promotion of regulated stablecoins will solve problems in financial and economic activities, create value for both individuals and businesses, and support the healthy development of digital assets in Hong Kong.”
The HKMA had reviewed 36 applications and advised that the first round would be limited. Treasurer Paul Chan said in February’s budget speech that the regulator would prioritize risk management, reserve quality and anti-money laundering controls, and that only a “small number” would be approved.
The decision to license note-issuing banks in the city first appears to be intentional. HSBC and Standard Chartered are two of only three commercial banks authorized to print Hong Kong dollar banknotes. The system dates back to 1846, when private banks began issuing currency backed by silver deposits in the absence of a colonial central bank.
Currently, each banknote-issuing bank deposits US dollars in the government’s exchange fund at a fixed interest rate of HK$7.80 per dollar, receives debt certificates in return, and prints banknotes on that basis.
Yue drew something similar in a December 2023 blog post.
Paper money issued by commercial banks before 1935 in exchange for deposited silver was a form of “private money,” and stablecoins function as blockchain-based equivalents, tokens with stable value that act as an on-chain medium of exchange, Yue wrote.
strict identity regime
This license comes with one of the world’s strictest KYC frameworks for digital money.
Under the HKMA’s AML guidelines, licensed stablecoins can only be transferred to wallets where the owner has been identified. This travel rule applies to transfers over HK$8,000 (~$1,000).
In practice, this means that Hong Kong dollar stablecoins are likely to embed compliance checks in their smart contracts to restrict transfers to on-chain whitelisted wallets. As such, it is structurally different from freely transferable tokens like USDT and USDC.
Hong Kong dollar CBDC will be put on the back burner
The bank-led stablecoin model also reflects the HKMA’s decision to deprioritize retail use of central bank digital currencies after an 11-party pilot program completed in October found that retail use was weak.
CBDC has historically been a big theme at Hong Kong FinTech Week. Last year there was almost no mention of it. Instead, stablecoins became a hot topic.
Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said at the time that Hong Kong’s push for stablecoins and tokenized deposits could “lay the foundations for a new era of digital trade payments”, positioning them as new mediums for cross-border commerce.
It remains to be seen whether the market agrees.
Stablecoins are a roughly $310 billion asset class, with USD-denominated tokens accounting for almost all of that.
According to data from CoinGecko, the largest stablecoins by market capitalization are pegged to the dollar, with tokens pegged to the euro or yen not making it to the top.
Hong Kong is betting that a regulated bank-issued Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, issued by the same institutions under the same constraints, can carve out a regional trade settlement role on new rails.
The question is whether non-dollar stablecoins, even if heavily regulated, can build the network effects necessary to compete.
