Stepping up efforts to minimize the inherent risks of trading cryptocurrency, major crypto exchange Binance has announced it would restrict access to derivatives products to Hong Kong users. The official announcement reads: “Users from Hong Kong will have a 90 days’ grace period to close their open positions. During the grace period, no new positions may be opened.” However, Binance’s proactive means to restrict Hong Kong users was not supported by a date of when the restrictions will be imposed. To provide clarity behind Binance’s latest restrictions, CEO Changpeng Zhao said the move is aimed to be a “proactive measure” …

Prominent British banker Jacob Rothschild’s investment firm Rothschild Investment Trust (RIT) Capital Partners partnered with New York-based Liberty City Ventures to lead pre-A funding for Aspen Digital, a crypto asset investment platform. According to an official announcement, the funding round ended up raising $8.8 million to help the Hong Kong-based company develop an institutional crypto investment platform targeted at asset managers, institutions and professional investors. Aspen Digital CEO and co-founder Yang He said that the funding would also help the company penetrate into the London market. The company was founded initially to spearhead the issuance of an in-house security token, …

Veteran Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP) is creating a series of NFTs using a new token standard called “ARTIFACT,” designed to preserve historical assets on the blockchain. In its ARTIFACT Litepaper, SCMP presents an overview of the project, which is a standardized metadata structure that can be used to ensure that key moments from SCMP’s 118-year-old archive of media assets can be preserved through distributed ownership and circulation. Gary Liu, SCMP’s CEO, has said that “blockchain offers immense potential to immutably preserve journalism that witnesses and explains history. The ‘ARTIFACT’ project is an opportunity to discover, collect, …

Hong Kong tech company Meitu has taken a $17.3-million hit on its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings — but on the upside, its Ether (ETH) holdings have gained $14.7 million. The developer of popular Photoshop-style apps spent a total of $100 million on BTC and ETH between March and April this year, acquiring a total of 940.89 BTC for $49.5 million and 31,000 ETH for $50.5 million. According to a Tuesday voluntary announcement from Meitu, the fair value of its BTC and ETH holdings is based on the market prices as of June 30, which is the final day of the firm’s …

From June 20 1995 until June 23 2021, Hongkongers concerned about growing Chinese influence in the Special Administrative Region had at least one local media outlet in their corner. Apple Daily was known for its pro-democracy stance, when not covering sensationalist tabloid-style news — two editorial innovations that set it apart from almost all other media outlets in Hong Kong at the time of its launch. And although the publication survived a 2020 raid on its offices, when the CEO, COO, Editor in Chief and other executives were arrested by police on June 17 2021 on suspicion of violating Article …

Bithumb’s Hong Kong affiliates are reportedly facing a civil suit for breach of contract. According to a Tuesday report by the Korea Times, the suit is being initiated by a former Bithumb partner in Thailand, which is accusing the South Korean-headquartered exchange of unilaterally halting its business in Thailand and causing major losses. The Thai firm — which remains unnamed — is reportedly preparing to file a lawsuit against Bithumb’s Hong Kong subsidiaries, including Bithumb Global Holdings and GBEX, as well as top company executives in July. According to the plaintiff firm, Bithumb’s Hong Kong-based entities were allegedly involved in …

A production and investment firm is launching a drama series on nonfungible tokens featuring a competition between Hong Kongers and Americans to create a digital currency. In a Sunday report from entertainment publication Variety, the AMM Global production company will be creating a 12-episode series called Crypto Keepers to premiere sometime next year. The drama, which will reportedly be released using nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, will feature major figures in the crypto space as well fictional plots surrounding the personal and professional lives of people involved in creating “the next Bitcoin-like digital currency.” The series will include both English and …

Hong Kong cyber-activists are not giving up on the freedom of speech and are backing up articles from the pro-democracy tabloid newspaper Apple Daily using blockchain technology. Following a national security probe, Apple Daily printed its last edition on Thursday. But Hong Kong activists took it from there and uploaded the publication’s articles on a distributed network, Reuters reported. Ho, a 21-year-old anonymous activist working in tech, started uploading Apple Daily articles on decentralized file storage platform ARWeave this week. Backed by investors like Andreessen Horowitz, the platform deploys a blockchain-like structure called blockweave to enable the permanent storage of …

A major Hong Kong-based online brokerage firm has reportedly suspended cryptocurrency futures trading due to regulatory concerns. Futu Securities, one of the biggest trading brokerages in Asia, has halted support of crypto futures contracts and trading services in response to regulatory requirements, Chinese financial publication Sina Finance reports Thursday. The platform’s customer service reportedly stated that the suspension will affect major contracts including CME Bitcoin futures, one of the world’s earliest Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts. The customer service team noted that non-futures crypto products like Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and the Osprey Bitcoin Trust will be still available on Futu. Futu …

The Chinese University of Hong Kong has partnered with Ethereum developer ConsenSys to launch the Medoxie COVID-19 Digital Health Passport. Blockchain-based, this new product could help healthcare workers combat the pandemic. The passport utilizes blockchain technology to record a patient’s COVID-19-related events — including test results, temperature checks and vaccinations — to provide a safe pathway to full economic reopening post-pandemic. Information held on the passport is said to be stored securely and privately. Initially, the digital passport will be accessed by medical professionals and academics within Hong Kong’s healthcare industry, paving the way for a new mobile app that …

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has published its “Fintech 2025” strategy with central bank digital currencies (CBDC), both retail and wholesale, included in the digital finance innovation package. Unveiling the fintech strategy via a release issued on Tuesday, CBDCs will reportedly play a part in the city administration’s goal of promoting comprehensive digital finance adoption by 2025. Concerning its plans for central bank digital currencies, the HKMA revealed that it would increase its research efforts to ensure Hong Kong’s readiness to float both retail and wholesale CBDCs. According to the announcement, the HKMA is collaborating with the Bank for …

Blockchain’s potential to sustain a distributed, tamper-proof infrastructure for collective digital memory has taken on an unexpected political salience for citizens in Hong Kong. Soon after Hong Kong’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong, or RTHK, revealed its intent to erase any archived content older than one year, residents hurried to save a trove of past news footage that had until now been freely available to the public. The reason for their haste was the recognition that RTHK’s archive contains critical coverage of the recent years of anti-authoritarian struggles and protests that were initially sparked by the introduction of the …