The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission issues new guidelines to facilitate licensed virtual asset trading platforms to connect global liquidity and expand diversified products and services.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission today issued two new circulars, setting out the expected standards for licensed virtual asset trading platform operators in Hong Kong to facilitate their access to global liquidity and expand the range of products and services they offer, taking an important step forward. One of the circulars states that the Securities and Futures Commission allows platform operators to combine trading instructions with affiliated overseas virtual asset trading platforms into a shared order book, which is a key step in the ASPIRe roadmap, aimed at attracting global platforms, trading volume, and liquidity providers. The next step for the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission will be to explore the feasibility of allowing licensed brokers to route client trading instructions to regulated overseas liquidity pools within the same group, and then consider further expanding the arrangements.