As it turns out, applicants are paying several millions of dollars for Hong Kong crypto exchange licenses—much less than the $25 million they paid a year ago.HashKey Group CEO Livio Wang stated that the cryptocurrency exchange licenses are “not necessarily tens of millions of dollars, but certainly tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars [several million in USD]” in an interview with the Financial Times.According to his explanation, “the expenses associated with the stage of preparing license review materials differ from those associated with the operation stage.” He said as much more.
“For HashKey, which is already in operation, our investment in the entire exchange sector is indeed tens of millions of dollars, but it is not expected to be so much for a platform that is still in the licensing stage.”
All unlicensed cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the East Asian city of Hong Kong were forced to close as of June 1 by Hong Kong regulators, who threatened to prosecute noncompliance. There are currently around 11 companies that have been designated as “deemed to be licensed.” HashKey and OSL are the only two exchanges with complete licenses as of last year. During the conversation, Wang disclosed that HashKey Exchange has enabled $440 billion in trades and is now managing $500 million in customer assets since its introduction. The blockchain executive said, “This week we activated 267% more customers than last week, and the number of newly activated customers more than tripled.”
HashKey established a global exchange based in Bermuda for users from throughout the world in April, imitating Coinbase. HashKey Global won’t serve Hong Kong, China, the US, and a number of other areas, in contrast to its Hong Kong-based competitor, which was the first to obtain a license to operate in the area. The unregulated cryptocurrency exchange JPEX managed to defraud investors of $166 million before going bankrupt in September 2023, despite the fact that the regulations were in place. This setback to the implementation of Hong Kong’s exchange licensing framework. Residents’ doubts about investing in cryptocurrencies have grown since then.