Hong Kong made its intentions clear to open the door to crypto trading for retail. Reports claim that China is quietly encouraging the move, using Hong Kong as a testing ground for what safe crypto trading might look like. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) outlined various caveats for retail investing in crypto, namely hinting at only having a small subset of the largest tokens available to trade.

The move from Hong Kong, with China behind the scenes, paints a stark contrast to the enforcement approach we’ve seen from the SEC in the US recently. While the West risks stifling innovation and driving crypto business out of the US, Asia looks to be positioning itself to be at the forefront of the next crypto revolution by welcoming crypto business with open arms.

According to the proposal by the SFC, they will only allow trading for “large-cap virtual assets…that are included in at least two approved indices”. It’s unclear what exactly classifies as large cap, and what the approved indices might be, but the guidance at least helps us narrow down the universe of tokens that could be available. Using some of crypto’s largest indices, @tier10k on Twitter listed the tokens they hold, identifying any potential overlap for tokens that are included in at least two indices.

Kaiko News