The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission issued two new guidelines to facilitate licensed virtual asset trading platforms.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) today published two new circulars outlining the expected standards for operators of licensed virtual asset trading platforms (platform operators) under the SFC. This marks an important step in facilitating their access to global Liquidity and expanding the range of products and services offered. One of the circulars states that the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) allows platform operators to merge trading instructions with associated overseas virtual asset trading platforms into a shared order book. This move is the first step under Pillar A (Access) of the ASPIRe roadmap, aimed at attracting global platforms, trading flows, and Liquidity providers (Note 1 and 2). Through close and seamless cross-platform matching and execution of trades, Hong Kong investors are expected to benefit from enhanced market Liquidity and more competitive pricing, while also reducing additional risks under robust safeguards. The next step for the China Securities Regulatory Commission will be to explore the feasibility of allowing licensed brokers to transfer client trading instructions to regulated overseas liquidity pools under the same group, and then consider whether to further expand the relevant arrangements. In order to optimize the roadmap aimed at expanding the pillar P (Products) of new products and services, the Securities and Futures Commission, in another circular, allowed platform operators to offer virtual assets without a 12-month track record to professional investors and stablecoins licensed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, as well as to sell tokenized securities and digital asset-related investment products (Note 3). In addition, related entities of platform operators may provide custody services for virtual assets or tokenized securities that are not traded on the relevant platform.