HashKey adds AVA and LINK trading for Hong Kong retail investors
Retail cryptocurrency investors in Hong Kong have expanded their investment options with the approval of the listing of Avalanche and Chainlink coins on Hashkey, one of the two fully licensed exchanges in the jurisdiction. Until now, retail offerings in Hong Kong were limited to Bitcoin and Ether.
Professional investors – individuals with portfolios worth at least HK$8 million (a little over HK$1 million) or representatives of financial institutions – have a very wide selection of cryptocurrencies to choose from.
Signs that are free of legal conflict
Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK) are available at Hashkey Retail to trade with USD. Hashkey CEO Livio Weng told the South China Morning Post that those coins were chosen to list because there are no legal conflicts surrounding them, unlike many cryptocurrencies with market capitalization.
AVAX is the native coin of the Avalanche network. According to the Cointelegraph price index, it has a market value of $9.3 billion, which ranks it as the 13th largest. LINK, the coin of the Chainlink Oracle network, ranked 16th with $6.9 billion. Weng commented:
This indicates that Hong Kong will increase rapidly in the Web3 area. There could be many reasons for this acceleration, but the main motivator may have been specifically Trump's announcement of his desire to develop Web3 in the United States.
Weng added that the exchange could receive approval for retail listings of additional cryptocurrencies “within weeks.”
Limited number of exchanges in Hong Kong
Hong Kong started allowing retail crypto trading in August 2023, Hashkey and OSL, Hong Kong's other fully compliant crypto exchange, have renewed their licenses. Other exchanges operate on a “deemed license” basis. Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) ordered exchanges without that condition or license to close by June 1.
Source: Hashkey Exchange
Related: Hong Kong SFC issues warning on fake crypto exchange pretending to be MEXC
The SFC stopped accepting applications for virtual asset trading platform licenses at the end of February. Since then, at least 13 exchanges have withdrawn their applications.
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