Item 1 of 2 Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey, speaks during the company’s listing ceremony on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in Hong Kong, China December 17, 2025. REUTERS/Kane Wu
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HashKey, founded in 2018, offers a range of services including asset management, brokerage and tokenization, in addition to running the Asian financial hub’s largest licensed crypto exchange.
Demand for the institutional investor portion of HashKey’s IPO reached 5.5 times the amount of shares on offer, according to company filings. The retail tranche was oversubscribed nearly 394 times.
HashKey’s IPO, the first by a crypto company in Hong Kong, came as some of the world’s top cryptocurrencies have been on a roller coaster ride in recent months after repeatedly hitting record highs earlier in the year.
Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, has plunged as much as 36% in about a month after hitting an all-time high of more than $126,000 in early October.
On Wednesday, Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey, expressed confidence in the long-term prospects of digital assets, despite short-term volatility.
“My confidence is only growing stronger and I am more optimistic than 10 years ago because we need to follow more regulations and compliance guidelines, which will allow the industry to grow further,” Xiao said.
Beijing banned cryptocurrency trading in 2021 and Chinese authorities recently renewed their warnings about virtual assets. But Hong Kong, which operates in a freer economic system, has embraced digital assets as it seeks to promote itself as a leading financial center.
Xiao said the measures taken by mainland regulators were necessary to combat pyramid schemes and fraud using stablecoins, but that it had nothing to do with Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong continues to promote policies regarding digital assets and we have benefited from this,” he said.
“We must firmly adhere to ‘one country’ but judiciously leverage ‘two systems’.”
HashKey, which is loss-making, will focus on cash flow rather than profitability in the near future and will continue to invest as the sector grows, he said.
According to the company’s prospectus, it plans to invest profits in technology infrastructure, market expansion and partnerships as well as operational and risk management.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan was present at the HashKey listing ceremony.
Many companies are planning to launch their IPOs in Hong Kong in December, as the city’s bourse prepares to post its best year since 2021 with more than $34 billion raised so far from new listings, according to LSEG data.
($1 = 7.7779 Hong Kong dollars)
Reporting by Donny Kwok, Kane Wu and Scott Murdoch; Editing by Saad Sayeed, Edwina Gibbs and Thomas Derpinghaus
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
