2023-07-26 | www.wenweipo.com (Finance) | News | View Original Content
Hong Kong Wen Wei Po (Reporter: Tsang Yip Chun) The new licensing system for virtual asset trading platforms has come into effect since June 1, and exchanges must apply for a license before they can continue to operate in Hong Kong after the transition period. iSunCrowd Chairman Chen Ping said that TideBit, the company's cryptocurrency trading platform, has not applied for a license for the time being, mainly because Hong Kong is using a traditional legal and financial perspective to construct legal regulations for the regulation of cryptocurrency, which is obviously a wrong direction of regulation that fails to meet the development of the industry. The main reason is that Hong Kong is currently working on the regulation of cryptocurrency from a traditional legal and financial perspective, which is obviously a wrong direction for regulation, and is not in line with the development of the industry, and he even said that "regulating cryptocurrencies from the perspective of securities and finance as well as the perspective of historical continuity will be the end of cryptocurrency regulation". He expects to make more suggestions to the authorities during the transitional period, so that the laws and regulations to be introduced in the future can be adapted to the nature of the virtual asset market as much as possible, and the company still intends to apply for a Hong Kong license.
B. Robin Xie, Executive Director of iSunCrowd, added that at present, tokens such as Bitcoin, Ether and Ripple are not based on physical assets, but rather the value shaped by consensus in the market. At present, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) indirectly regulates tokens, which is clearly beyond its functions, and there is a need to regulate tokens from a different perspective. She added that Ripple had earlier won a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which ruled that Ripple was not a security. Although the company has not yet applied for a license, it has plans to do so, and since it is a de facto trading platform, it is expected that the application process will be smoother.
Seeking Cooperation with Mainstream Banks in Hong Kong and the U.S.
It has been rumored that some international banks in Hong Kong have refused to open accounts for cryptocurrency exchanges. Mr. Chan said, "[Cooperation with local banks] is not very smooth, but it's generally smooth," and expected to announce which local banks it will cooperate with in a week's time at the earliest. He pointed out that all transactions on the platform are "above board" and that cooperation between the platform and banks is entering a new phase that will bring more convenience to investors, yet the larger Chinese banks are still relatively cautious about virtual asset trading platforms.
B. Robin Xie said, TideBit has always operated in Hong Kong, and through Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States and other places in the bank to deal with customers in and out of funds, local and U.S. banks are willing to cooperate with TideBit. As for Silvergate Bank in the United States, which closed down earlier, as the company's partner for digital dollar issuance, the company has now found another better partner bank, and in the future will also seek cooperation with mainstream banks in Hong Kong and the United States. She emphasized that virtual asset trading platforms need to think about how to merge well with the existing traditional financial system.
Accumulated Transactions to Date: USD 85.5 Billion
B. Robin Xie mentioned that as of the end of May, TideBit had 40,100 active registered users, including more than 20,000 KYC users, of which more than 90% are KYC users in Hong Kong, and that TideBit's cumulative turnover since its operation in 2017 has been around $85.5 billion, which is not a large scale, as Binance has a transaction volume of $7.2 billion in the past 24 hours, Coinbase has $1.057 billion, OKX has $1.132 billion, and TideBit has a transaction volume of $7.2 billion. After the FTX crash last year, there was a lot of activity on the market, but the volume was not as large as it could have been.
B. Robin Xie continued, "Because cryptocurrency exchanges operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the sheer volume of data they generate causes delays of about 3 months to a year in existing accounting and auditing systems. iSunCrowd combines the company's history of research and development of decentralized cloud-based services to provide TideBit with a blockchain-based accounting system and a zero-knowledge, proof-of-knowledge, AI-based audit system that can be used every minute of every day. With the use of a blockchain-based accounting system and an artificial intelligence-based zero-knowledge proof audit system for TideBit, the transaction books generated by the hourly transaction records also approximate real-time audits and statistics, and can be generated at any time in the form of standardized financial statements, such as balance sheets, profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, etc., to provide users with the greatest degree of clarity and to better protect their interests.