The Securities and Futures Commission is Hong Kong's investor-facing markets regulator and the lead supervisor for the tokenised investment-product layer of the local stack. SFC licenses intermediaries that handle tokenised SFC-authorised investment products, supervises virtual asset trading platforms, and now (April 2026) operates the new framework allowing secondary trading of tokenised SFC-authorised investment products. The agency runs in parallel with HKMA on the wholesale layer and is increasingly visible internationally through its IOSCO roles, including hosting the IOSCO Committee 2 meeting on secondary markets in Hong Kong in April 2026. For a tokenisation operator, SFC is the counterparty for any retail-facing tokenised fund or security, for VATP licensing, and for the conduct rules that wrap intermediaries handling tokenised assets.
Role in tokenisation
- Owns the regulatory framework for tokenised SFC-authorised investment products, including the April 2026 framework opening secondary trading inside the existing licensing perimeter.
- Supervises virtual asset trading platforms under a dedicated regime, materially expanded by the November 2025 circulars (see Recent activity).
- Active at IOSCO on secondary-market policy. Hosted the IOSCO Committee 2 meeting in Hong Kong in April 2026.
- Co-leading with the Financial Services and Treasury Bureau (FSTB) on the planned 2026 legislative package for VA dealer and custodian licensing via AMLO amendments (Coindesk, 25 Dec 2025).
Recent activity
- 24 Apr 2026. SFC joins global regulatory effort again to combat unlawful activities of finfluencers (26PR63).
- 24 Apr 2026. New speech by Kelvin Wong: keynote speech at Deloitte's Hong Kong CFO Forum (26PR64).
- 23 Apr 2026. SFC reaches agreement with PricewaterhouseCoopers for shareholder compensation of HK$1bn regarding false financial statements of China Evergrande Group for 2019 and 2020 (26PR62).
- 22 Apr 2026. SFC hosts IOSCO Committee 2 meeting in Hong Kong on secondary market (26PR61).
- 21 Apr 2026. New speech by Kelvin Wong at the Listing Ceremony of CSOP Gold ETF (26PR60).
- 20 Apr 2026. SFC unveils new regulatory framework to allow secondary trading of tokenised SFC-authorised investment products (26PR59).
- 20 Apr 2026. New speech by Eric Yip: keynote address at Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2026 (26PR58).
- Late Dec 2025. SFC and FSTB confirm 2026 legislative target for the comprehensive VA dealer and custodian licensing regime via AMLO amendments rather than a standalone Act (Coindesk). Closes the perimeter gap on standalone custody and OTC dealing activity outside the VATP trading-venue context.
- 3 Nov 2025. SFC publishes circulars expanding the VATP perimeter: removing the 12-month track-record requirement for professional-investor-only assets, permitting VATP distribution of investment products with virtual-asset exposure, admitting tokenised securities and regulated stablecoins onto VATPs, widening the custody scope correspondingly, and authorising integration with global affiliate order books for the professional-investor segment (Davis Polk client update). The affiliate-order-book provision is the structurally most consequential change because it targets the venue-side liquidity-fragmentation problem that has constrained Hong Kong VATP volumes since the regime started in 2023. See HK SFC VATP regime expansion for the deeper treatment.
Open questions
- Body text for press releases 26PR58 through 26PR64 was not present in the ingested entries; substantive content of the secondary-trading framework, the Eric Yip keynote, and both Kelvin Wong speeches needs to be sourced separately.
- Whether the secondary-trading framework distinguishes between tokenised authorised funds, tokenised MMFs, and tokenised structured products.
- Published list of Hong Kong VATPs that have moved to integrate global affiliate order books following the November 2025 circulars.
- Timing and named-issuer scope for the 2026 VA dealer and custodian licensing bill.