Will Hong Kong gain the pricing power of BTC?

Nakamoto 2025-9-23 15:30 78702人围观 BTC

Will Hong Kong gain the pricing power of BTC? On Monday, April 29, this week, six virtual asset spot currency ETFs approved by the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission, including Huaxia (Hong Kong), Boshi International and Harvest International, wer

Will Hong Kong gain pricing power over BTC?

On Monday, April 29, this week, six virtual asset spot currency ETFs approved by the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission, including Huaxia (Hong Kong), Boshi International and Harvest International, were issued for the first time and were officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on April 30. Many media have promoted that Bitcoin ETFs issued in Hong Kong can gain pricing power and can compete with Bitcoin ETFs issued in the United States, but in fact this is not the case.

Bitcoin is a decentralized currency, and its counterpart is the credit currency issued by central banks and governments that are now centralized money-printing institutions. Bitcoin was born during the 2008 financial crisis. Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto felt that centralized institutions and governments were abusing credit and printing money crazily, so he invented a decentralized currency and reached consensus through blockchain ledgers to form trust and avoid the abuse of financial credit. Since the birth of Bitcoin, whenever the credit of major countries has been severely damaged, such as the European debt crisis, epidemic quantitative easing, and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the price of Bitcoin has risen sharply.

Among all credit currencies, the strongest is the U.S. dollar. As soon as the U.S. dollar raises interest rates, the world trembles, and fragile economies around the world can easily fall into a debt crisis. In recent months, U.S. inflation has continued to exceed expectations, interest rate cut expectations have dropped significantly, the Japanese yen once fell to 160, and Bitcoin also made a sharp correction from 67,000 to around 56,000. Yesterday, the U.S. unemployment rate exceeded expectations, and Bitcoin rose sharply to around $63,000. Bitcoin is currently competing against the U.S. dollar, the world's largest credit currency. A major change in the strength of the U.S. dollar is when the demand for Bitcoin changes significantly. Since it is against the U.S. dollar, and economic data and events that reflect the credit of the U.S. dollar basically occur during the daytime hours in the United States, and Hong Kong’s BTC ETFs do not have night trading and cannot be traded, how can Hong Kong obtain the pricing power of BTC? Most of the global institutions used Bitcoin trading tools in the US market to trade. Hong Kong did not follow up until more than half of the incident was digested.

The scale of asset management and the liquidity of management fees jointly cause Hong Kong’s Bitcoin ETFs to be inferior to those in the United States. Although the spot ETFs of BTC and ETH issued in Hong Kong had a trading volume of about 10 million US dollars on the first day, while the daily trading volume of US ETFs is several billion US dollars, the trading volume of Hong Kong ETFs is less than one percent of that of the United States. The reasons for such a large difference in transaction volume are:

The management fee is high. The management fee of BlackRock in the United States is as low as 0.25%. The Bitcoin ETF with the lowest management fee in Hong Kong is the Harvest Fund ETF, with a management fee of 0.3%.；
There is a big gap in asset management scale. Global asset management scale will be US$98.3 trillion in 2022, of which North America’s asset management scale will be US$46.5 trillion and Europe’s will be US$22.2 trillion, down 14% and 11% respectively year-on-year.； The asset management scale of Japan and Australia is US$7.1 trillion, and the wealth management scale of Hong Kong is approximately US$4 trillion. The size of Hong Kong is only 1/10 of North America.
Mainland Chinese cannot buy BTC ETFs in Hong Kong. Although China defined cryptocurrency trading as illegal as early as 2021, according to 2023 data, Chinese active users of Binance, the world's largest exchange, contributed $90 billion a month. Although Hong Kong has issued BTC ETFs, mainlanders cannot purchase them, so they cannot contribute to the trading volume. If mainlanders are allowed to buy Hong Kong BTC ETFs (probably not), then the amount of funds will increase greatly.

Does the low-volume Hong Kong BTC ETF still have a future?

The government allowed Bitcoin ETFs, casinos became compliant, and began to shift from private to government-owned and government-private joint ventures. Although it is difficult to obtain the pricing power of Bitcoin, Hong Kong can still gain a certain status. From the perspective of Hong Kong’s development strategy, Hong Kong is currently focusing on the development of science and technology innovation and the cryptocurrency industry. Science and technology innovation requires the Hong Kong government to invest both people and money in the development of science and technology innovation system, science and technology innovation atmosphere, science and technology innovation funds, etc., especially the continuous investment of hundreds of billions of Hong Kong dollars, which is a great test for the financial and work capabilities of the Hong Kong government. The Hong Kong government has only proven one ability in the past - collecting rent from real estate. The cryptocurrency industry is more of a casino business. The government only needs to open good casinos, attract hot money to play, and collect rents. The daily turnover of tens of billions of global cryptocurrencies is dozens of times that of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. If Hong Kong can get a piece of the pie, it is equivalent to recreating the Hong Kong stock market. Due to its free nature, Hong Kong is naturally a port for capital flow, so it is very suitable for Hong Kong to introduce capital into the cryptocurrency trading industry. In addition to rent collection, building a self-built casino business can better solve the problem of cryptocurrency money laundering, and can also reduce the risks of ordinary investors to a certain extent. After all, the overall crypto market is too volatile, the risks are too high, and projects are mixed.

The next step is to expand the types and quantities of cryptocurrency products and release casino stablecoins. Although Bitcoin has increased ten thousand times compared to all credit currencies in the past decade or so, the single-day fluctuations are still very large. Therefore, the cryptocurrency world is not yet Bitcoin’s currency standard. Many transactions are through stablecoins, which act as casino chips. Currently, stablecoins USDT and USDC are U.S. dollar-based and pegged to the U.S. dollar. Hong Kong’s next step will be to issue Hong Kong dollar stablecoins. In addition, if the casino only has poker and blackjack, tourists will be bored, so the variety and quantity of cryptocurrency are also very important. Currently, the currencies of Hong Kong's approved exchanges are still single and cannot meet demand, and will need to be continuously expanded in the future. The continuous expansion is just like the issuance of stocks, and there will be corresponding regulatory procedures and issuance procedures.

Finally, from the issuance of BTC spot ETFs in the United States to the issuance of BTC and ETH spot ETFs in Hong Kong, Bitcoin has undergone a qualitative change and gradually entered the mainstream investment system and entered a new cycle. No matter how strong the wind and rain are, it will be difficult to restrain its vigorous development into a towering tree.