Hong Kong’s First Stablecoin Is Live. It Has Disclosed No Circulation Data, and Retail Cannot Buy It.

Hong Kong's stablecoin regime has produced a working product. What it has not yet produced is evidence that anyone is using it at scale, or a route for ordinary residents to touch it.

Anchorpoint Financial began phase-one beta access for HKDAP — HKD At Par — on 12 August, four months after receiving one of the city's first two issuer licences. The token is pegged one-to-one to the Hong Kong dollar and, notably, runs on Ethereum mainnet rather than a permissioned chain. HashKey Exchange and OSL Group serve as authorised distributors, with HashKey completing the first mint-and-redemption transaction converting HKDAP to fiat.

Access is restricted to institutional distributors, corporate users and professional investors. Retail access is targeted for as early as the end of 2026, though Anchorpoint has committed to no date.

The gap in the picture is what the launch has actually done. Anchorpoint has disclosed no circulation figures, distinct-user counts or sustained transaction-volume data — leaving HKDAP, in Asia Times' assessment, more than a demonstration token but far from a broad retail currency.

That distinction matters because a stablecoin's usefulness is a function of its float and its acceptance, neither of which is currently observable.

Two licences, two entirely different bets

The second licensed issuer has not launched at all, and when it does it will do something quite different.

HSBC, which holds licence FRS02 to Anchorpoint's FRS01, plans to distribute its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin through PayMe — which serves more than 3.3 million users — and its mobile banking app, targeting the second half of 2026. Where Anchorpoint is building institutional rails on a public blockchain and reaching users through crypto exchanges, HSBC is aiming directly at everyday consumer payments through apps people already have.

Anchorpoint has framed its own priorities around cross-border payments and the settlement and distribution of tokenised real-world assets, describing a business-to-business-to-consumer model intended to maximise ecosystem participation.

So Hong Kong is running two experiments simultaneously: whether regulated tokenised money works as institutional settlement infrastructure, and whether it works as retail payment. Neither answer is in yet, and the second has not started.

The bar was set deliberately high

The scarcity of licences is a policy choice, and the numbers show how aggressively the filter was applied.

Seventy-seven institutions expressed interest after the Stablecoins Ordinance took effect on 1 August 2025. Thirty-six submitted formal applications. Two received licences — meaning roughly 94% of applicants were turned away. The first licences also arrived later than planned, after a March 2026 timeline slipped.

The requirements explain part of that. Licensed issuers must hold at least HK$25 million in paid-up capital, maintain reserves equal to 100% of outstanding token value in segregated high-quality liquid assets, process redemptions at face value within one business day without unreasonable conditions, and submit to independent attestations of reserve adequacy. Holders earn no interest. Only licensed issuers, banks and regulated platforms may offer the tokens to the public.

Not everyone reads that as prudence. Industry publication Blockhead argued that awarding the first licences to HSBC and a Standard Chartered-led venture, rather than opening the field to crypto-native issuers, meant Hong Kong had built a parallel track controlled at every point and handed the keys to institutions that already held them.

That critique was published before any HKD stablecoin moved money. The beta rollout is the first opportunity to test it against evidence rather than expectation.

What retail investors can and cannot do

For most Hong Kong residents, the practical position is unchanged from before the licences were granted.

No licensed HKD stablecoin is available to retail. Unlicensed foreign stablecoins including USDT and USDC remain restricted to professional investors, a category requiring individuals to hold portfolios of at least HK$8 million. The HKMA has also warned about fraudulent tokens purporting to be HKDAP or HSBC products.

There is a structural reason the city is licensing Hong Kong dollar tokens specifically rather than yuan-pegged alternatives: Beijing prohibits yuan-pegged stablecoins offshore. The HKD is the only currency Hong Kong can build this market around.

The regulatory perimeter is also still expanding. The Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau and the SFC intend to introduce legislation this year establishing licensing regimes for virtual asset dealers and custodians, extending oversight beyond trading platforms and stablecoin issuers.

What to watch

The first disclosure of circulation or transaction data is the single most informative event ahead. Until Anchorpoint publishes something, assessments of HKDAP's traction are inference rather than analysis.

The second is HSBC's launch. A stablecoin inside PayMe would put regulated tokenised money in front of millions of ordinary users at once, which is a materially different test from institutional settlement.

The third is whether retail access arrives by year-end as Anchorpoint has suggested. That timeline is a target, not a commitment, and it has already slipped once at the licensing stage.