Paul Chan Mo-po, Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, today published a ministerial essay titled "Practicing Cooperation and Win-win". In it, he revealed that Hong Kong will hold the GreenTech Summit and Green Week in early 2024, which is expected to facilitate more green funds and project docking. Chan Mo-po also pointed out that since the launch of the virtual banking license four years ago, competition has prompted traditional banks to take bigger steps towards digital transformation, and some virtual banks have achieved good development in Southeast Asian markets.

ICBC (Asia) has completed the offline payment project scenario testing under the Cyberport Dollar Pilot Scheme of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and launched a simulated Cyberport dollar physical card. The aim is to explore more payment modes through testing and develop dedicated POS and mobile applications.

According to Wang Yang, Vice President of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Chief Scientific Advisor of Hong Kong Web3.0 Association, and Zhu Haokang, a Ph.D. student in Financial Technology at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a member of Hong Kong Web3.0 Association's RWA and Stablecoin Working Group, Hong Kong needs to focus more on building a vibrant ecosystem to ensure that licensed institutions have viable business plans. Although regulation helps maintain market order, the current licensing system is a burden for virtual asset companies to some extent.

Hong Kong police pointed out on the "Guardian Network" social platform that recently there have been scammers who impersonate Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, and send phishing text messages. If users click on the text messages, scammers can steal their Binance accounts and transfer the assets in the accounts. The police stated that in the past two weeks, they have received 11 cases of virtual assets in Binance accounts being transferred, involving a total of 3.5 million yuan.

Hong Kong has become an active crypto market, with recent crypto volume transferred to the region rivalling that of mainland China, despite hosting only 0.5% of China's population. This trend may signal that the Chinese government is becoming more open to crypto initiatives. While most crypto activity in China still stems from centralized exchanges, the majority of Hong Kong's activity is connected to DeFi. Eastern Asia accounted for 8.8% of global crypto activity during the analyzed period.

Hong Kong's recent crypto initiatives and industry-friendly regulations have created optimism for increased crypto activity in East Asia, which has seen a decline in crypto transaction value since China's ban on trading activities in 2019. Despite having a smaller population, Hong Kong is already an active crypto market and could serve as a testing ground for broader cryptocurrency adoption in China.

Hong Kong's Acting Financial Secretary, Paul Chan Mo-po, said at the Hong Kong Bankers' Summit that there are now over 800 fintech companies in Hong Kong, up from about 180 five years ago. The Hong Kong government will continue to cultivate a large number of talents to support the development of fintech and green finance, and will also promote projects such as central bank digital currencies. <br>

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) in Hong Kong has pledged to increase its efforts to combat unregulated cryptocurrency trading platforms in its jurisdiction. To help members of the public identify potentially unregulated virtual asset trading platforms (VATPs), the SFC will publish a list of all licensed, deemed licensed, closing down, and application-pending VATPs.

Hong Kong Legislative Council member Wu Jiezhuang held a press conference today (18th) to respond to the suspected fraud incident of the virtual asset trading platform JPEX. He revealed that he has received about 30 requests for help from victims, and the amounts lost by each person are different, with some being six-digit numbers and some being seven-digit numbers. The total amount involved is estimated to be over 100 million Hong Kong dollars.

JPEX, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Hong Kong, has halted trading due to an investigation by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the arrest of one of its associates. The SFC alleges that JPEX has been operating without a license and has received numerous complaints.