January 28, 2026
Our Correspondent
Hong Kong’s cautious embrace of digital assets has taken another small but telling step. Mox Bank, the virtual lender backed by Standard Chartered, PCCW, HKT and Trip.com, has begun offering cryptocurrency trading after securing an upgraded Type 1 licence from the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).
According to the Hong Kong Economic Times, Mox has partnered with HashKey Exchange for execution and HashKey Custody for safekeeping, allowing customers to trade bitcoin and ether in US dollars through linked bank accounts. The service is embedded within the Mox app—and firmly fenced in. Clients may buy and sell crypto, but cannot transfer assets in or out of the platform, a constraint designed to keep speculation on a short regulatory leash.
Mox is the second virtual bank to enter the space, following ZA Bank’s launch in July 2025. Fees, however, suggest competition will be muted rather than cut-throat. Trades on Mox Invest incur commissions of 1.25% for basic users and 0.5% for elite members. ZA Bank, by contrast, has dangled promotional rates as low as 0.8%, though these come with a fixed transaction charge and a separate platform fee.
The timing is deliberate. Mox’s chief executive, Barbaros Uygun, recently hinted at the crypto rollout while touting the bank’s growth on LinkedIn. The lender now serves around 750,000 customers—roughly 12% of Hong Kong’s bankable population. Deposits rose by more than 20% year on year to November 2025, while US-dollar deposits have surged fourteen-fold since late 2024, suggesting an increasingly internationally minded client base.
More broadly, the move reflects Hong Kong’s steady expansion of its digital-asset rulebook. As of January 25th, the SFC had granted enhanced Type 1 licences to 59 institutions, including heavyweight Chinese brokerages such as BOC International Securities, CITIC Securities Brokerage, CMBC Securities and GF Securities. Rather than unleashing crypto, the regulator is domesticating it—one licence at a time.
City officials are keen to advertise progress. Speaking at the World Economic Forum last week, financial secretary Paul Chan noted that Hong Kong has registered 11 virtual-asset trading platforms since 2023 and plans to introduce a stablecoin licensing regime later this year.
The result is a distinctly Hong Kong model of crypto adoption: bank-led, tightly controlled and deliberately unexciting. For now, digital assets here are less a revolution than another regulated product—available, but only just.
