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Hong Kong’s HashKey crypto exchange launches global platform with aim of overtaking Coinbase in 5 years

  • Hong Kong’s biggest licensed cryptocurrency exchange operator has launched a global trading platform, but it is not available in the US or China
  • HashKey COO Livio Weng says overtaking Coinbase will not be hard, points to advantages of ease of use and regulatory compliance

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HashKey Group’s booth on the first day of the four-day Hong Kong Web3 Festival. Photo: Handout
Xinmei Shen

Hong Kong’s biggest licensed cryptocurrency exchange operator, HashKey Group, has launched a new global trading platform that it hopes will help the company overtake US-based crypto giant Coinbase in trading volume within five years.

The new cryptocurrency exchange, HashKey Global, operates with a Digital Asset Business licence issued in Bermuda. It is now available globally with one big caveat: for regulatory reasons, certain markets like the US, mainland China and Hong Kong cannot use it, HashKey Group chief operating officer (COO) Livio Weng said in an interview on Saturday on the sidelines of the Hong Kong Web3 Festival, a crypto conference organised by the company.
The company, established in Hong Kong in 2018, operates the local HashKey Exchange, which was approved by the city’s securities regulator last August to serve retail investors under the city’s new crypto regulatory regime. The exchange can so far only offer bitcoin and ether for retail trading.

HashKey Exchange now has more than 170,000 registered users, Weng said on Saturday. It hosted about US$35 million in 24-hour trading volume on Monday, according to market tracker CoinGecko, which ranks the platform 15th according to a trust score that tries to measure legitimacy of trading data. However, HashKey’s volume is still a trickle compared with some of the world’s largest exchanges.

Binance had US$6.3 billion in 24-hour normalised trading volume by mid-day on Monday, while OKX recorded more than US$2.1 billion, CoinGecko shows.

HashKey is hoping that a new global exchange will supercharge its market position. Weng said the company intends to have more trading volume than Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, across all HashKey Group platforms by 2029.

“We have seen their data and we don’t think that’ll be difficult,” Weng said.

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