BitcoinBTC and cryptocurrencies—including major coins ethereum, XRPXRP and solana—have rocketed higher in recent months (with one Wall Street legend warning the U.S. dollar is “finished”).
The bitcoin price has topped $43,000 per bitcoin, adding billions to the combined ethereum, XRP, solana and crypto market, and could have now turned a corner, according to a surprise JPMorgan bitcoin price prediction.
Now, as the Federal Reserve could be about to trigger an accidental bitcoin price boom, excitement around U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is turning toward Hong Kong, where the securities regulator has received its first spot bitcoin ETF application from one of China’s largest fund managers.
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The local media report, translated with Google, said the regulator is looking to approve a spot bitcoin ETF as soon “after the Spring Festival,” referring to the Lunar New Year holiday that falls on February 10 this year.
The SFC may follow a similar path to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) path to spot bitcoin ETF approval, it was reported, allowing several funds to begin trading at the same time.
Samsung Asset Management, which launched a bitcoin futures ETF in 2023, has reportedly said it wouldn’t “eliminate the possibility of exploring to launch a spot ETF,” while the financial giant Venture Smart Financial Holdings (VSFG) earlier this month said it’s aiming to launch a bitcoin spot ETF in the first quarter of 2024.
Hong Kong is also ramping up its push for stablecoin rules, with several companies, including Harvest Global Investments, RD Technologies and VSFG, showing interest in stablecoin-related trials, Bloomberg reported.
Earlier this month, Livio Weng, chief operating officer of Hong Kong crypto exchange HashKey, told The Block that around 10 fund companies have started looking into launching potential spot crypto ETFs in Hong Kong.
The city of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China that’s slowly being absorbed into the country, has adopted a crypto-friendly approach to crypto over the last year, with the SFC creating crypto-focused regulations in 2023 that allowed institutional and retail investors to participate in crypto trading.
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Last week, a Reuters investigation found that people in China are finding ways to trade crypto in Hong Kong despite the 2021 ban that outlawed crypto due to a lack of confidence in traditional investments.
China’s economic downturn “has made investment on the mainland risky, uncertain and disappointing, so people are looking to allocate assets offshore,” a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange executive who declined to be identified told Reuters. “Almost every day, we see mainland investors coming into this market.”
Crypto exchanges OKX and Binance are among those still offering trading services for investors in China if they open overseas bank accounts, the Reuters report added, while crypto sleuths at Chainalysis recently found crypto-related activities in China have rocketed over the last year, pushing it from 144th to 13th in a global ranking of country’s peer-to-peer trade volume.
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