Hong Kong’s Hashkey among city’s first to start retail crypto exchange
- Retail trading of bitcoin and ether using Hong Kong dollars will be allowed ‘within a week or two’, HashKey Group COO Livio Weng said
- Hashkey is aiming to sign up 500,000 to 1 million retail users globally by the end of this year, and more than 10 million by 2025
One of Hong Kong’s first licensed cryptocurrency exchanges has officially started accepting retail users, allowing them to trade the two largest crypto tokens directly with fiat currencies amid the city’s push to boost the virtual asset industry.
The Hashkey Exchange opened up to retail investors in Hong Kong, enabling them to buy bitcoin and ether with US dollar deposits, the company said on Monday.
Retail trading of the two cryptocurrencies using Hong Kong dollars will be allowed “within a week or two”, HashKey Group COO Livio Weng said.
In October last year Hong Kong announced a major push to develop its virtual asset industry, with the goal of attracting businesses back to the city, and becoming a global crypto hub. In the following months, the city laid out rules that allowed centralised crypto exchanges to serve retail customers provided they have a licence issued by the SFC.