Hong Kong's Stablecoin Strategy Is Not About Speed - It's About Sequencing

A Chinese-language rumor has been circulating lately that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is preparing to issue a second batch of stablecoin licenses around China's National Day in October. The HKMA has not confirmed this. It has also not denied it, choosing instead what Chinese-language outlets described as a refusal to comment on market gossip.

The non-answer is worth reading more carefully than the rumor. Because what the HKMA has actually been saying for months - consistently, through press releases, legislative testimony, and official guidance - is something quite different. The central bank is not building toward an open stablecoin marketplace. It is carefully sequencing who gets to issue digital money, starting with institutions it already supervises, and keeping the total number of licenses deliberately small.

To understand why, it helps to step back from the October calendar and look at what Hong Kong has actually done so far.

Two licenses. Thirty-six applicants. A message.

Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance came into force on August 1, 2025, creating the first licensing regime in the region for fiat-referenced stablecoins. By the September 30 deadline for the first application round, the HKMA received 36 formal applications. In April, it approved exactly two. The approval rate was 5.6%.

The winners were HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial - a joint venture between Standard Chartered, Hong Kong Telecom, and Animoca Brands. Both are, crucially, tied to note-issuing banks. HSBC and Standard Chartered are two of only three commercial banks authorized to print Hong Kong dollar banknotes, a system that dates back to 1846.

The HKMA did not accidentally pick banks first. Chief Executive Eddie Yue has drawn the parallel explicitly: pre-1935 banknotes issued by private banks in exchange for deposited silver were a form of private money, and stablecoins are their blockchain-based equivalent. By licensing note-issuing banks, Hong Kong is signaling that it views regulated stablecoins as a continuation of its existing monetary architecture, not a disruption of it.

What "very limited" means

The HKMA has been unusually direct about what happens next - or doesn't. In a June 10 Legislative Council exchange, the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Christopher Hui stated that the licensing threshold will remain high and that "the overall number of licenses will remain very limited." Any additional licenses will depend on whether the first two issuers launch successfully, how the market responds, and how international regulatory developments evolve.

The regulator has initiated further engagement with the remaining 34 applicants, but it has also been transparent that it has "no definitive inclination regarding the future direction and timing of licensing at this stage."

In other words, the second batch is not a question of when but whether, and the answer depends on how the first two licensees perform. The October National Day rumor reads like market impatience masquerading as intelligence. The reality is more methodical.

A bank-first model, globally unusual

Hong Kong's approach sits at an interesting crossroads in the global stablecoin landscape. In the United States, the political debate centers on whether stablecoin issuers should be able to yield-bearing their reserves, and whether banks or crypto-native firms should dominate issuance. In Europe, MiCA created a broad licensing framework that applies to any issuer meeting reserve and governance standards. Both jurisdictions, in different ways, treat stablecoin issuance as a category open to multiple types of applicant.

Hong Kong is doing something closer to industrial policy. By starting with banks it already supervises - institutions with proven risk-management infrastructure, global settlement networks, and existing compliance frameworks - the HKMA is introducing stablecoins within familiar supervisory structures. As one analyst at Elliptic put it, this approach leaves "scope for a broader range of fintech and digital asset firms to participate as the framework evolves," but the opening salvo is deliberately restricted.

The two licensees are also pursuing different use cases. HSBC plans to integrate its HKD-denominated stablecoin directly into PayMe, a digital wallet with 3.3 million existing users, targeting peer-to-peer transfers and merchant payments. Anchorpoint is taking a B2B2C route emphasizing cross-border payments, tokenized asset settlement, and supply chain finance. They are not set up to compete head-to-head on day one, which reduces the risk of the HKMA having to referee a licensing dispute.

Why the cautious rhythm matters

This sequencing strategy is not just about risk management. It's about who gets to intermediate money.

Hong Kong has long been a financial hub that bridges mainland China, global capital markets, and Asia-Pacific trade. Its stablecoin model reflects that position. The HKMA's anti-money-laundering guidelines for licensed stablecoins include one of the world's strictest identity regimes: transfers can only occur to wallets whose owners have been identity-verified, and the travel rule (which requires sharing sender and receiver information for transfers above a threshold) kicks in at HK$8,000, roughly $1,000.

In practice, this means HKD stablecoins will embed compliance checks into their smart contracts, restricting transfers to whitelisted wallets. They are structurally different from freely transferable tokens like USDT or USDC, which operate on a permissionless basis. Hong Kong is building a stablecoin model that is closer to digital bank deposits than to open-network money.

The implication is that Hong Kong's regulated stablecoins are designed to complement its existing banking system and cross-border settlement infrastructure, not to create an alternative rails ecosystem that bypasses it. The HKMA also deprioritized its retail CBDC pilot after finding the use case weak, leaving bank-issued stablecoins as the primary vehicle for digital fiat in the territory.

What to watch

The first two licensees have said they intend to launch in the coming months - HSBC targeted the second half of 2026, while Anchorpoint began phasing its rollout from the second quarter. In May, the HKMA and SFC also issued guidance relaxing certain regulatory requirements for activities involving licensed stablecoins, signaling that the regulatory architecture is already being fine-tuned as the ecosystem moves from theory to operation.

Whether any second batch of licenses materializes will depend on how these launches perform, whether they attract meaningful transaction volume, and whether the HKMA decides the market can absorb more issuers without diluting the quality it's trying to enforce. The National Day calendar is not the right lens. The right lens is whether a bank-first, permissioned stablecoin model can actually generate the adoption Hong Kong needs to justify its ambition.

What I find more interesting than the second-batch speculation is the question the HKMA's sequencing raises for other jurisdictions watching from the sidelines. If Hong Kong's model succeeds - if bank-issued, tightly regulated stablecoins become a genuine settlement layer for regional trade - it will offer regulators in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia a blueprint that privileges incumbents but may also move faster and with fewer political fights. If it fails to build network effects, the lesson will be that digital money requires more participants than a couple of note-issuing banks can provide.

Either outcome teaches us something about the future shape of fiat money on new rails. That's worth paying attention to, even if the October rumor turns out to be just that.