Hong Kong’s SFC is hiring more crypto regulators, aiming to strengthen market surveillance and speed up exchange approvals. Hong Kong is doubling down on its ambition to become a global crypto hub, with its securities regulator proposing an expansion of its crypto oversight team. The city’s Securities and Futures Commission has proposed increasing its staff, with a particular focus on monitoring virtual asset trading platforms, improving market surveillance, and ramping up enforcement. In its budget plan for the 2025–26 financial year, the SFC is seeking 15 new hires, eight of whom will be dedicated to virtual asset regulation. The budget proposal, presented at a Legislative Council meeting on Feb. 3, projects the SFC’s recurrent expenditure to reach HK$2.59 billion ($332.4 million) for the next fiscal year—an increase of 7.2% from the previous year’s forecast. A large portion of this growth—HK$130.5 million ($16.7 million)—comes from higher staff costs, including an average salary increase of 2.1%. The additional hires are seen as necessary after the SFC admitted that its existing staff, while experienced, struggled to meet inspection targets. In 2023, the regulator conducted only 200 on-site inspections of licensed financial firms, falling short of its goal of 300. With additional personnel, the SFC seeks to remedy this shortfall and enhance its supervision of Hong Kong’s crypto ecosystem. A faster path to licensing Hong Kong has been working aggressively to position itself as a regulated yet attractive destination for crypto businesses. In June 2023, the city formally launched its licensing regime for VATPs, allowing approved exchanges to serve retail investors under a structured framework. This shift marked a turning point, as Hong Kong moved away from its previous stance, which largely limited crypto access to institutional players. Since then, the government has been refining its regulatory approach, including advancing a proposed stablecoin oversight framework. Meanwhile, the SFC has been actively engaging with trading platforms to fasten the licensing process. In a January statement, the commission stated its close collaboration with VATP executives, stating that this proactive engagement was helping to speed up approvals while reinforcing compliance expectations. The results of this push are becoming clear. On Jan. 27, the SFC issued its first two licenses of 2025, approving PantherTrade and YAX as licensed crypto exchanges. This brought the total number of licensed VATPs in Hong Kong to nine, including OSL and HashKey.
