Hong Kong has the conditions to become a major hub for virtual assets, rivalling markets like the US and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but the city’s regulators must act swiftly to realise its potential, according to Zhao Changpeng, founder and largest shareholder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
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In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post on Friday, Zhao, widely known as CZ, said the Hong Kong government had shown a “very clear attitude towards embracing Web3” and had the capability to move quickly.
“We shouldn’t evaluate a place’s future potential based on its current status,” said the 48-year-old entrepreneur, regarded as the wealthiest individual in the crypto industry and ranked by Forbes as the 22nd richest person in the world, with a personal net worth of US$74.7 billion. “We should assess it based on the speed of change.”
“There’s nothing magical about what the US, UAE or other countries are doing,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow, there could be a meeting in Hong Kong where [officials] say, ‘Look, we’re going to change some things.’”
One immediate change that Zhao suggested was to expand the range of cryptocurrencies permitted for trading on licensed exchanges in Hong Kong beyond the current four – bitcoin, ether, avalanche and chainlink. He said those options were “not enough” and advocated for a model similar to Japan’s, which allows exchanges to determine which tokens can be traded.
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