Compiled by: Tia, Techub News
As one of Asia's top crypto asset companies, HashKey Group has always been at the forefront of Web3 ecosystem development. From Hong Kong to Singapore, to Japan and Bermuda, HashKey has established a globally compliant digital asset ecosystem network. In the rapid development of the Web3 ecosystem in Hong Kong, HashKey has built not only a compliant exchange but also, centered around its Tokenisation business, has driven innovation in the asset tokenisation field.
In an exclusive interview with Techub News, Anna Liu from HashKey Group shared in-depth insights into the group's global strategy, the core value of the tokenisation department, and the important role of future tokenisation in promoting the integration of traditional finance and the Web3 market. From participating in the HKMA Ensemble project to supporting the tokenisation of both on-chain native and real-world assets, HashKey is empowering high-quality projects and reshaping global capital flow rules through technological innovation and compliance support. In this interview, we will delve into how HashKey leads the wave of tokenisation and outline its blueprint for future development.
Techub News: As fellow Asian financial centers, why did HashKey choose to focus its strategic efforts on Hong Kong rather than Singapore? How does HashKey plan to leverage Hong Kong as a platform to drive global business development?
Anna Liu: Hong Kong and Singapore are not only both Asian financial centers but are expected to also become global crypto asset centers. We have deep layouts in both Hong Kong and Singapore and hold relevant licenses; the first license granted to HashKey was the No. 9 license obtained by HashKey Capital in Hong Kong. The policy friendliness in both Hong Kong and Singapore is very high, and the regulatory differences give each a unique character in the development of the Web3 industry. For example, Hong Kong places more emphasis on the regulation of trading-related businesses, while Singapore focuses more on asset management, payment, and other areas of regulation. In the coming years, both places will continue to seek a balanced development between innovation and regulation, and the prospects are promising. Since 2018, HashKey Group has gradually established a global Web3 ecosystem covering Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Bermuda, and other places within a highly compliant regulatory framework. We will continue to promote the feasibility of large-scale application of blockchain technology in multiple fields, providing trusted and accessible digital asset services for one billion users worldwide.
Techub News: HashKey's strategic layout in Hong Kong is not just about exchanges but also encompasses extensive ecosystem construction. Can you elaborate on HashKey Group's overall strategy in the global digital asset and Web3 field? Especially, what strategic role does the newly established Tokenisation department play in this? How does the Tokenisation business empower other business units?
Anna Liu: We believe that the main theme of future industry development will be "integration," therefore HashKey hopes to establish a comprehensive Web3 financial infrastructure within a highly compliant regulatory framework, on the one hand promoting the integration of traditional and Web3 financial markets, and on the other hand promoting the integration of Eastern and Western Web3 markets.
Currently, HashKey has established businesses in various fields including licensed global exchanges, investment and asset management, tokenisation, and infrastructure services. You may have first known about HashKey Capital, which is expected to reach an asset management scale of $1 billion by 2024 and has invested in over 600 blockchain projects, including well-known projects like Berachain, Babylon, Aethir, Catizen, etc. In recent years, you may have heard more about HashKey Exchange, which has surpassed HKD 535 billion in total trading volume, with assets soon to exceed HKD 6 billion, making it Hong Kong's largest compliant virtual asset exchange. The offshore compliant exchange HashKey Global, which obtained a Bermuda license this year, achieved profitability within 2 months of its launch. As of November 11, according to the latest data from Coingecko, HashKey Global ranks 7th in global trading, becoming one of the fastest-growing licensed exchanges globally in 2024. In addition, our HashKey Cloud business provides professional, stable, and secure blockchain services to global clients, with its node validation services covering over 80 mainstream public chains and an asset management scale of over 1.2 million ETH, ranking in the top three in Asia and among the top ten globally.
From an entire industry chain perspective, HashKey Group has already established a compliant and efficient secondary market. However, to ensure the sustainable healthy development of the ecosystem, we deeply recognize that we must continuously introduce high-quality assets to maintain the vitality and innovative momentum of the ecosystem. Therefore, last year we established the HashKey Tokenisation business line. Since its establishment in 2023, HashKey Tokenisation has focused on providing comprehensive digital asset issuance solutions for cooperative projects, assisting Web3 startup teams in the token issuance process from 0 to 1, offering business consulting, technical guidance, economic model design, and legal compliance consulting, among other professional supports. HashKey Tokenisation not only closely collaborates with multiple business units within the group, but also engages in deep cooperation with HashKey Group's extensive ecosystem partners, aiming to achieve optimal resource allocation through mutual empowerment. We actively promote various funds in the group ecosystem to provide financing support for high-quality projects, fully leveraging HashKey Cloud's technical capabilities to provide advanced infrastructure services to project partners, and providing project parties with on-exchange resources for listing through compliant exchanges, including HashKey Exchange. Additionally, we have launched public testing and will launch the mainnet of HashKey Chain this year, which can provide a bridge connecting tokenisation projects to the Web3 ecosystem. Earlier, HashKey Tokenisation participated in the HKMA Ensemble project to assist in promoting the development of Hong Kong's tokenisation market.
This comprehensive service model not only effectively enhances the overall vitality of the HashKey Group ecosystem but also provides clients with reliable full lifecycle support, ensuring maximization and win-win of interests for all parties. Through continuous collaborative cooperation and innovation, HashKey Group continually promotes the joint growth and prosperity of the ecosystem, consolidating its leadership position in the global Web3 field.
Techub News: HashKey has always followed a compliance route, and we assume that HashKey's Tokenisation business should also be compliant. However, compliant Tokenisation seems to have difficulty expanding the market; firstly, the requirements for investors are very high, and secondly, due to the need to adhere to compliance requirements, the greatest advantage of being on-chain—composability and DeFi—cannot be utilized. Following this logic, the user group participating in Tokenisation should be relatively limited? Currently, what kind of users would choose to invest in Tokenisation assets? Based on various disadvantages, what is HashKey's steadfast reason for choosing to develop Tokenisation? Or what significance does Tokenisation hold for the entire crypto industry? What role does Tokenisation play in this?
Anna Liu: Precisely speaking, HashKey Tokenisation has always been committed to being at the forefront of the industry, combining compliance and market innovation to promote the elevation of industry standards. We clearly recognize that the path to compliance is fraught with challenges, especially in meeting strict regulatory requirements while also satisfying the demand for on-chain business innovation. Therefore, our team focuses on the global market, continuously discovering high-quality targets to support healthy industry development.
The business direction of HashKey Tokenisation is mainly divided into two major areas: first, the tokenisation of traditional assets, bringing more high-quality assets onto the chain for seamless integration with the Web3 ecosystem; second, supporting services for on-chain native assets, providing consulting, financing advice, technical support, and community operation resources for Web3 projects, creating a comprehensive solution.
Regarding tokenisation business, the current market is still in its initial stage, with tokenisation applications mainly remaining at the proof of concept (PoC) stage. Although technology and compliance guidelines are not yet mature, it is precisely for this reason that the industry needs leading companies to take the lead in demonstrating, promoting technological progress and compliance innovation, ultimately achieving scaled applications. We choose to actively participate in this process because we believe that high-quality and unique assets will bring significant attraction to Hong Kong's compliant exchanges and financial ecosystem. Through a differentiated asset portfolio, we can provide Hong Kong with a unique competitive edge in the global capital market, attracting the attention of international investors.
As a bridge and connector, we help cooperative projects issue digital assets, especially assisting entrepreneurs in gradually building asset issuance models from 0 to 1. When deeply engaging in cooperative projects, we not only invest significant time but also provide professional support in distributed ledger technology, token economics, and compliance issuance frameworks to help projects clarify their business models and growth paths.
By empowering high-quality assets with blockchain technology, HashKey Tokenisation can create liquidity for various projects, becoming a booster for the upgrading of Hong Kong's economy and the transformation of industries. We provide a full suite of services for Security Token Offering (STO) and Real World Asset (RWA) tokenisation projects, ensuring that they achieve innovative financing models while complying with regulatory requirements.
Techub News: What is HashKey's vision for the future of Tokenisation? What is the plan to achieve this vision? Where is the current focus of Tokenisation and what stage is its development at? Are there any planned measures to expand the scale of Tokenisation?
Anna Liu: Our vision is to become Asia's leading Tokenisation professional service institution, providing the market with replicable successful practices through high-standard benchmark projects, establishing a brand image of innovative compliance, and laying a unique positioning in the industry.
Development Status and Main Focus Points
Currently, the Tokenisation business is in its early development stage, and we are focusing on the selection of high-quality assets and the compliant issuance of tokens. While maintaining close communication with regulatory authorities, we focus on how to effectively promote the primary market issuance of tokenised assets and the compliant circulation in the secondary market within the compliance framework.
The core challenges we face at this stage include:
(1) Identification and evaluation of high-quality assets: Tokenisation is not suitable for all assets. At this stage, tokenisation projects generally focus on ownership or future revenue rights, thus suitable assets for tokenisation need to have stable value support and clear revenue prospects.
(2) Investment attractiveness of the primary market: Companies often choose tokenisation out of the need to expand financing channels or explore new markets. For investors, return on investment and stability are core concerns, therefore higher-value and more stable assets are more attractive in the primary market.
(3) Expansion of liquidity in the secondary market: Under the current regulatory framework in Hong Kong, tokenized assets are limited to participation by professional investors or institutions. Whether the scope of investors will be further broadened in the future still requires further regulatory guidance.
Future Development Stages
Based on this background, our future development path includes the following stages:
Step 1: Benchmark project pilot. We will prioritize selecting high-quality assets with value support and stable returns to create highly compliant tokenization projects, in order to validate their primary issuance and secondary circulation mechanisms within the compliance framework.
Step 2: Explore commercial combinations with Web3. Within the allowed policy framework, launch minimum viable products (MVP) and gradually engage in cooperation with fields such as DeFi. By combining with Web3 business models, we will validate the feasibility and value creation potential of tokenisation in the emerging financial ecosystem.
Step 3: Scale development. With the gradual improvement of regulatory policies, enhancement of technological capabilities, and continuous maturation of business models, when commercial value sufficiently supports compliance costs, we will achieve scaled applications. Through this phase of ecological cooperation, we will attract more partners to jointly promote the implementation of tokenisation on a global scale.
We firmly believe that with the advancement of technology and the gradual improvement of compliance standards, Tokenisation will become a key engine for financial innovation and the integration of capital markets, promoting the mainstream application of virtual assets and the efficient flow of global capital.
Techub News: Are there many project parties currently developing Tokenisation in Hong Kong? What projects is the Tokenisation department mainly supporting? Are there any noteworthy projects?
Anna Liu: In the fields of on-chain native assets and real-world asset tokenisation, HashKey Tokenisation has always been a pioneer in the industry. Many institutions and project parties are actively seeking cooperation with us to jointly promote innovation and implementation in tokenisation business.
It is worth mentioning that HashKey is deeply involved in the working groups of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) Ensemble project in two key application areas: Fixed Income and Investment Funds, as well as Green and Sustainable Finance.
In the areas of fixed income and investment funds, we are collaborating with several institutions to jointly explore the tokenisation market use cases for money market funds. Currently, the pilot work in this field is steadily advancing, aiming to build a tokenisation ecosystem that meets compliance requirements and achieves efficient trading. This not only supplements traditional financial markets but also drives innovation in the emerging virtual asset market.
In the area of green and sustainable finance, we focus on the innovative combination of "blockchain + Internet of Things," using digital means to assist more high-quality real-world assets in tokenised issuance. We believe that these assets should not remain at the proof-of-concept stage but need to truly empower actual business scenarios. For example, we are actively exploring solutions that combine IoT data with blockchain to enhance asset transparency and liquidity, bringing greater trust and efficiency to the market. Additionally, in the area of on-chain native assets, we are also actively trying various innovative directions. For instance, in distributed computing networks, we address the computational power bottleneck issues in traditional markets through decentralization. This innovation not only helps to reduce computational costs but also enhances the resilience and scalability of the network through a distributed architecture, laying a solid foundation for the sustainable development of on-chain native assets.
The Hong Kong government's goal is to develop Hong Kong into an international virtual asset center, and HashKey Tokenisation will actively respond to this call. We are not only committed to exploring the forefront of tokenization business but also hope to assist more Web3 projects that can create real commercial value to establish themselves in Hong Kong through professional services and innovative technology. We firmly believe that through close cooperation with the government and various industry players, Hong Kong will occupy a leading global position in the virtual asset and Web3 ecosystem.
Techub News: How to balance costs and benefits in the process of promoting Tokenisation?
Anna Liu: Tokenisation, as a tool for financial and business model innovation, although having long-term growth potential, is currently in its early stages, making it difficult to cover costs with returns. This is also the main reason why tokenisation has not been widely applied. Commercial tokenisation involves various cost challenges, such as compliance costs, technology development, market promotion, etc.
From the perspective of current tokenisation projects in Europe and the United States, scenarios that generate income entirely on-chain (such as mining, liquidity provision, etc.) are more suitable for dividend token models. In such projects, profits are automatically distributed through smart contracts, and the authenticity and transparency of data are higher. Although on-chain smart contracts can significantly simplify the dividend process, they still cannot completely replace audits. Compared to traditional industries, auditing in such on-chain models is less challenging and time-consuming but still needs to meet regulatory conditions.
Overall, as an emerging industry, Tokenisation still needs to balance reducing costs and achieving innovative returns. At this current stage, achieving "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" through underlying technology improvements, coupled with innovative models such as dividend tokens and automatic on-chain yield distribution, Tokenisation has already shown potential for application in specific financial scenarios. With further improvements in technology and regulation, we are confident that Tokenisation will not only create new revenue models in the future but also change the landscape of capital markets, providing broader development space for global financial innovation.
