Hong Kong to license four crypto services under a 2026 bill

Hong Kong will try to bring four kinds of crypto business under one licensing regime. The government says a bill covering trading, custody, advisory and management services will go before lawmakers this year. For firms operating there now, the clock has started.

Christopher Hui, the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, gave the timing at a Legislative Council Finance Committee briefing on 5 October 2026. A statement issued by the government that day said it would set up a licensing system for virtual asset trading, custody, advisory and management services. It did not name a month.

What the four licences would cover

Each licence targets a different job in the market. Trading covers the platforms and desks that match buyers and sellers, including the over-the-counter dealers who handle big orders off public order books. Custody covers firms that hold private keys for clients, the digital equivalent of a vault. Advisory covers anyone paid to give advice on virtual assets. Management covers the portfolio managers who run client money in crypto.

All four would fall under the Securities and Futures Commission, according to the government and to reporting by crypto.news. The dealing rules would borrow from the framework for Type 1 securities dealing. Advisory and management would track the rules for Type 4 and Type 9 activities, the same categories that already cover stock advice and fund management. The whole package would be added to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, the law Hong Kong already uses for crypto exchanges, rather than written as a standalone act. Regulators put the approach in one line: same business, same risks, same rules.

What Hong Kong already regulates

Hong Kong did not start from zero. It has licensed crypto trading platforms since it reopened to retail trading in 2023, and only licensed exchanges may serve users there. It passed a Stablecoins Ordinance that took effect on 1 August 2025, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted its first stablecoin issuer licences in April 2026. Those pieces were built one at a time. Retail investors were let back into licensed platforms from 1 June 2023, after years when only professional investors could use them, and the stablecoin rules followed two years later.

Groundwork for the rest is not new either. A consultation on dealing and custody ran through 2025 and drew more than 190 responses, with conclusions published on 24 December 2025. A second round, on advisory and management, closed in January 2026 with 51 responses, according to crypto.news.

Custodians, advisers, brokers and fund managers still had no licence of their own. That gap is the target. The bill would let a client buy a coin, store it, take advice on it and have it managed, with a licensed firm at each step.

This push comes as other financial centres chase the same firms. Singapore, Dubai and the European Union have all built crypto rules, and Hong Kong has used regulation as a selling point since it let retail investors back into the market. Dubai even created a dedicated regulator, VARA, to license the industry.

Timeline, and the risk for firms already trading

A supplement to the 2026 Policy Address, published on 16 September, said the bill is being drafted and should reach the Legislative Council in the final quarter of the year. A bill introduced is not a law passed. It still faces committee scrutiny and a vote, and no start date for the licences has been set. Not yet law.

One detail matters for anyone already in business. Reporting on the consultation conclusions says there is no grandfathering, no arrangement that treats existing operators as licensed while they apply. Firms running these services without approval from the SFC or the HKMA may have to stop once the rules take effect. The government has not set out capital thresholds in its own statement, and law firm summaries that quote figures do not agree, so treat those as draft.

What to watch

Three things will show whether the plan holds. Timing is the first test. 'Within this year' is a target, not a fixed date.

Custody is the second. The SFC has said it will focus on how firms safeguard client private keys, which is where a lot can go wrong. The third is fit with the rest of the world. Brussels built MiCA as a single rulebook across its member states, and even Russia has registered its first licensed crypto operators. Hong Kong wants to be the market that firms in Asia pick first.