HashKey Capital Secures Type 1 Licence from SFC, Paving the Way for Broader Crypto Accessibility in Hong Kong
- HashKey Group
- Mar 18, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 21, 2025
HONG KONG - 18 MARCH 2025 - HashKey Capital has obtained a Type 1 licence from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), further expanding its regulated capabilities under the SFC.
HashKey Capital currently holds a Type 9 licence, enabling the firm to offer asset management products to both retail and institutional clients. The firm has recently received approval to provide discretionary account management for virtual assets (VA) under the same licence. Additionally, HashKey Capital holds a Type 4 licence, obtained in May last year, which allows it to offer securities and virtual asset investment advisory services.
With the addition of the Type 1 licence, HashKey Capital will now be able to provide brokerage services to both retail and professional investors, and market and distribute funds and structured products, including those related to virtual assets.
“The Type 1 licence enhances our capabilities and provides significant value to investors,” said Vivien Wong, Partner, Liquid Funds. “It enables us to offer a broader range of investment opportunities, catering to different risk preferences with a strong focus on risk management and long-term growth.”
The new offerings can be classified into three major categories:
Market access - The company can provide brokerage services to two markets: introducing TradFi clients to crypto exchanges, and crypto native clients to brokers. As part of this arrangement, HashKey Capital will not hold custodianship over any client assets.
Investment funds - In addition to the HashKey FTSE Digital Asset Top 20 Index Fund and its two ETFs, HashKey Capital can now offer its clients access to diverse quantitative strategies, such as arbitrage trading, commodity trading advisory (CTA), market neutral and trend-following.
Structured products - HashKey Capital can provide its clients access to a diverse suite of structured investment products, including principal-protected solutions, yield enhancement products, binary options, dual-currency offerings, and other sophisticated strategies.
These offerings will enable HashKey Capital to serve investors with more diverse goals, such as capital preservation or hedging, across a variety of investor types. In addition to retail and institutional investors, HashKey Capital believes its new offerings will be ideal for distribution channels, family offices, and even entities venturing into crypto for the first time, such as insurance companies or endowments.
“Financial inclusion is now rarely discussed in crypto, but that is what will be created. We will open virtual assets to investors who have thus far been excluded from them due to technical or other limitations. This accessibility will help mainstream crypto in Hong Kong, accelerating its bid to be a hub for virtual assets in the region,” said Wong.
Beyond its existing offerings, HashKey Capital continues to expand its suite of financial products. Following the launch of the HashKey Top 20 Index Fund—which has already outperformed other crypto index funds—the firm will continue to roll out additional tracker funds scheduled for release this year. With authorization from the SFC to develop new investment vehicles, HashKey Capital will collaborate with leading financial institutions worldwide to bring more institutional-grade digital asset products to market.
Investors interested in investing with HashKey Capital are encouraged to reach out to liquidfunds@hashkey.com.
ABOUT HASHKEY CAPITAL
HashKey Capital is a global digital asset and blockchain leader helping institutions, founders and talents advance the blockchain industry.
As one of the largest crypto fund managers and being the earliest corporate investor in Ethereum, HashKey Capital has managed over US$1 billion in client assets since its inception. Leveraging its unparalleled expertise, HashKey Capital's venture investments team oversees a diversified portfolio of over 600 pioneering projects across institutional services, infrastructure, data, AI, consumer services/ technology and more.
On the liquid funds front, HashKey Capital manages a suite of digital asset products, including an actively managed fund and the Bosera HashKey Bitcoin (3008.HK) and Ether (3009.HK) spot ETFs, which are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX).
With our deep knowledge across the blockchain ecosystem, HashKey Capital has built a robust network connecting founders, investors, developers, and regulators.
It's impressive how HashKey Capital is making virtual assets more accessible with all these new offerings, from structured products to diverse quantitative strategies. It sounds like they're really trying to cater to a wide range of investor types and goals. Sometimes, after grappling with complex financial concepts like these, I like to unwind with something completely different, like Play MeowdoKu Free Online – it's a fun brainteaser!
This is fantastic news for Hong Kong's crypto scene! It's great to see HashKey Capital expanding its regulated capabilities with the Type 1 licence, especially for introducing TradFi clients to crypto exchanges. For anyone looking to get a feel for how these markets work before diving into complex strategies, I've found that playing the Free Online StonkRider Game can be a fun way to understand market dynamics without any risk.
The financial inclusion dimension of this announcement has particular resonance from a development economics perspective. Vivien Wong's observation that financial inclusion is "rarely discussed in crypto" is accurate and important — the dominant narrative in institutional digital asset management has been about sophisticated investors gaining access to a new asset class, not about removing barriers for previously excluded participants. The explicit targeting of entities "venturing into crypto for the first time, such as insurance companies or endowments" is significant in a development context because these are precisely the institutional investors that manage long-term savings and pension assets in emerging markets, where digital asset exposure could provide meaningful portfolio diversification benefits that are unavailable through traditional asset classes. In my research…
My clients have been asking about regulated digital asset exposure with increasing frequency over the past eighteen months, and this announcement from HashKey Capital directly addresses the gap I have been struggling to fill. The combination of SFC-licensed structured products — particularly principal-protected solutions for capital-preservation-oriented clients and yield enhancement products for income-seeking clients — with the credibility of a firm that has managed over US$1 billion in client assets and holds three SFC licences simultaneously, creates a proposition I can actually present to conservative high-net-worth clients without qualification. The collaboration with leading financial institutions worldwide for institutional-grade product development is also reassuring from a due diligence perspective. In my personal life I use a moon sign calculator and a Chinese…
From a compliance and governance perspective, the structural design of HashKey Capital's market access offering deserves specific attention. The decision not to hold custodianship over client assets in the brokerage introduction model is a sophisticated risk management choice — it limits HashKey Capital's regulatory exposure while still enabling it to generate revenue from the introduction relationship. This is a model that traditional prime brokerage has used for decades, and its application to the crypto-TradFi bridge is logical. The dual-direction flow — TradFi clients introduced to crypto exchanges, and crypto-native clients introduced to traditional brokers — also creates a natural hedging of business model risk across market cycles. In my compliance work I use a markup calculator for fee disclosure analysis, a…