The listing of HashKey is a declaration, announcing that the era of compliance has arrived, that long-termism will ultimately prevail, and that the rules of the game have been rewritten.

As of September 30, 2025, the HashKey platform has facilitated a total spot trading volume of 13 trillion Hong Kong dollars. Among the 11 licensed virtual asset trading platforms in Hong Kong, it leads with over 75% market share, firmly establishing itself as the largest regional onshore platform in Asia. On December 1, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that HashKey Holdings passed the hearing, with Morgan Stanley, Cathay Securities, and Guotai Junan International providing joint support. The birth of Hong Kong's "first stock" in crypto assets is inevitable.

However, if you only focus on the fundraising scale, revenue figures, and equity structure, you are gravely mistaken. The real questions to ask are: Why it? Why now? Behind this is Hong Kong's strategic layout in virtual asset regulation over the past decade, and a complete reshuffling and restructuring of the industry landscape.

Dancing with Regulation: A Decade of Strategic Resolve

From 2014 to 2017, Hong Kong's virtual asset market was still growing wildly in a regulatory gray area. At that time, cryptocurrencies were traded freely as commodities, and regulatory agencies merely issued risk warnings regarding ICOs. It wasn't until 2017 that the Securities and Futures Commission revealed its first card: if tokens are deemed securities, they must comply with securities regulations.

In this cautious and conservative environment, countless blockchain projects either sought to survive quietly or exited the stage in silence. HashKey chose a seemingly slow but actually wise path—backing itself with traditional enterprises, focusing on technology research and infrastructure, drawing clear lines, and refusing to operate in gray areas.

From 2018 to 2022, while the industry was still chasing short-term profits, HashKey had already completed a comprehensive layout of technology, capital, and licenses. With the backing of traditional industries and capital, it honed its internal capabilities while waiting for a policy window. These years were a critical period for accumulating momentum.

The real turning point came in 2022. The Hong Kong Legislative Council revised the "Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Ordinance," officially establishing a licensing system for virtual asset service providers (VASP), encompassing trading platforms, custody, and asset management. On June 1, 2023, the new regulations took effect, mandating KYC, anti-money laundering, asset segregation, strict audits, and risk management.

At this historic juncture, HashKey's strategic layout perfectly aligned with Hong Kong's regulatory progress. It obtained a licensed qualification, becoming a compliant trading platform recognized by the Securities and Futures Commission, and could legitimately provide services to the public. Subsequently, HashKey rapidly advanced along three fronts: trading facilitation, on-chain services, and asset management, covering core areas such as trading, staking, asset management, and financial product distribution, and submitted its IPO application in 2025.

Looking back at this timeline, HashKey's rise is by no means a matter of luck. It is a product that has grown alongside the maturation of Hong Kong's virtual asset regulatory environment, in conjunction with systems, policies, and markets. The intersection of policy direction and corporate strategy is the true underlying logic behind its "first stock" status.

The Cost of Compliance: Using Heavy Assets to Gain Industry Pricing Power

In recent years, global regulation has continued to tighten, and those unlicensed exchanges lacking compliance mechanisms have either exited voluntarily or been forced to shut down. Meanwhile, licensed compliant platforms have begun to gain a voice. Against this backdrop, HashKey has chosen a path that is destined to be difficult but will ultimately prevail—emphasizing compliance, licensing, and infrastructure, and refusing to make quick money in gray areas.

This path requires significant investment, incurs high costs, and yields slow results, but it represents the future of the industry. For the industry to have longevity, it must move towards institutionalization and standardization.

The operational logic of compliant exchanges is fundamentally different from traditional platforms. They must strictly enforce asset segregation, ensuring that client funds and platform assets are never mixed; they must complete KYC and anti-money laundering reviews, undergo regular audits and compliance checks, with clearly traceable operational boundaries.

High standards mean high costs, but they bring real protection for client assets, as well as traceability and legal protection when issues arise. The calculation of this equation depends on whether you seek short-term gains or long-term trust.

From a business model perspective, compliant exchanges resemble traditional financial infrastructure more closely, with operational models, risk control systems, capital requirements, compliance audits, and technological investments all requiring real capital. This determines that their profit cycle is longer, but their return structure is more stable.

Looking at HashKey's financial reports, revenue is growing rapidly, but profitability has not yet been balanced. This is precisely a footnote to the true cost of the compliance model—using high investment and long-termism to exchange for a solid compliance foundation and robust roots.

From the perspective of customer structure and industry reconstruction, the true value of compliant exchanges lies not in how lively retail trading is, but in their ability to provide institutional funds, real asset tokenization, staking, and asset management with institutionalized entry points.

For this reason, HashKey's focus on on-chain services, institutional-level staking, RWA tokenization, and asset management significantly enhances its appeal to institutional investors, funds, and asset management companies. This not only extends the exchange's business but also signifies that the entire crypto asset industry is transitioning from the era of speculative trading to a new era of financial infrastructure, institutional investment, and long-term allocation.

If we examine HashKey from the position of a compliant exchange, it bears a more profound industry mission. It aims to become a provider of infrastructure that integrates compliance, technology, capital, and institutional participation. In the context of increasingly stringent global regulation, the compliant exchanges represented by HashKey are the key bridge for the industry to transition from the era of regulatory arbitrage to the era of compliance premium.

The Industry Questions of the Compliance Era

Looking back at HashKey's development trajectory, this company has bet all its chips on compliant infrastructure since 2018. Regardless of market sentiment fluctuations, it has remained steadfast, continuously deepening its efforts in licensing, risk control, asset segregation, and technological investment.

Now, it lays its books open at the exchange's doorstep, preparing to become the "first stock" in crypto assets. This is not just about seeking market pricing for itself, but also about legitimizing this long-underestimated path of compliance.

When the compliant exchange stands on the stage of the Hong Kong capital market for the first time as the "first stock," it is the result of the past decade's regulatory experiments in Hong Kong's virtual asset sector that is being put to the test.

The real question that the market needs to answer is: In the context of declining risk appetite, tightening regulation, and accelerating institutionalization, where will Asia's virtual asset market head? Can the path of compliance become the dominant force in the next phase of the industry?

HashKey's listing is a declaration, announcing that the era of compliance has arrived, that long-termism will ultimately prevail, and that the rules of the game have been rewritten.

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