Compliance & Regulation

Hong Kong’s securities regulator mulling over new rules for city’s cryptocurrency exchanges

Outgoing chairman Carlson Tong Ka-shing says Hong Kong is leading the world is developing measures required to keep the fast-growing sector in check

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is exploring ways to regulate the various cryptocurrency trading platforms already operating in the city and thus tighten investor protection, says its outgoing chairman Carlson Tong Ka-shing.

His chief sensitivity, however, he told South China Morning Post, is that the SFC is technically restricted by its legal regulatory reach of securities only.

“We do not think imposing a total ban on these platforms is necessarily the right approach, and it will not work in today’s internet world when trading can cross national boundaries,” said Tong, who is due to hand over the SFC’s reins to Tim Lui Tim-leung on October 19.

READ THE ARTICLE by scmp