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註冊 2025-12-4
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香港地冇論搞乜總有一堆包拗頸。
Letters | Hong Kong’s regulation of fintech must not stifle innovation
As an international financial centre, Hong Kong has a world-class financial sector, but it has only a nascent fintech sector.
As one of the notable outcomes of fintech, virtual assets, including cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, have been gaining ground recently. The government recently gazetted the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Bill 2022, proposing to introduce a licensing regime for virtual asset service providers.
The bill stipulates that all virtual asset service providers should be licensed, and they can only offer services to professional investors. Yet, to qualify as a professional investor, an individual must have a portfolio of not less than HK$8 million.
The government is taking a very conservative approach to virtual assets. It seeks to impose a robust regime regulating virtual assets and their service providers, rather than establishing a virtual asset-friendly environment.
Undeniably, Hong Kong government is obliged to preserve a safe and well-ordered market. It also has a duty to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and guard against the risks that virtual assets may be used for fraud, scams or a method to extort money from naive speculators.
However, regulation and innovation are not mutually exclusive. Other jurisdictions like the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland also face money laundering and security issues, but instead of imposing stringent requirements that stifle innovation, they set more favourable and convenient rules for conducting a virtual asset business.
Moreover, retail investors in Hong Kong are likely to continue to trade using overseas exchanges even after the introduction of the new regulations. Therefore, the proposed virtual asset service provider regulatory regime in Hong Kong is unnecessarily rigorous. The government should not regulate at the expense of innovation.
It is hoped that Hong Kong can be strong not only in “fin”, but also in “tech” in the future, and it can carve out a major role in a fintech-enabled future.
Lau Kit-hung, partner, and Dragon Lo Koon-kit, intern, at Robinsons Lawyers
[ 本帖最後由 Bitcoin 於 2022-8-11 08:54 編輯 ]
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