Consensus Hong Kong Conference Concludes

- Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) used the event to announce a new framework allowing licensed platforms to offer crypto perpetual contracts to professional investors and to permit brokers to provide crypto margin financing using assets like Bitcoin and Ether as collateral. - A key theme was the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), with speakers from J.P. Morgan and Securitize discussing the shift from proofs-of-concept to live deployment for on-chain government bonds and money market funds. - Financial Secretary Paul Chan revealed that Hong Kong banks now hold over HK$14 billion in digital assets under custody, a 180% year-over-year increase, and have begun offering tokenized deposit services that reached HK$29 billion by the end of last year. - Panel discussions on institutional strategy in Asia noted a significant shift from direct, speculative crypto exposure to more cautious, market-neutral yield strategies that utilize regulated structures like ETFs and stablecoins. - The practical application of AI in financial services was a major focus, with the conference's hackathon winners developing tools like an AI-powered portfolio manager and an AI agent for securely managing health data on-chain. - Underscoring a push for stablecoin-based payment infrastructure, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is actively reviewing 36 applications for stablecoin issuer licenses and expects to grant the first batch in March 2026. - Sessions on digital identity explored the use of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) as foundational infrastructure required to enable confidential transactions at institutional scale. - Speakers from Aptos Labs and Circle highlighted that stablecoin adoption in emerging Asian markets is being driven by utility in cross-border trade, where they solve for fragmented payment rails and high currency risk for small businesses.