The future of the #香港稳定币条例 stablecoin depends on the symbiosis of 'compliance' and 'availability'. Hong Kong's attempts prove that strict regulation does not necessarily stifle innovation, but we must avoid building monopoly walls in the name of stability! 🤡

The strict licensing mechanism of Hong Kong's 'Stablecoin Regulation' forces the elimination of financially weak or inadequately risk-controlled institutions through high thresholds, significantly reducing the number of market participants to single digits in the short term, but significantly lowering the risks of decoupling and bank runs, thereby building a solid trust foundation for the industry.

At the same time, the regulation grants the Monetary Authority 'intervention rights of statutory managers' and other bank-level risk control tools, and imposes severe penalties for unlicensed issuance, effectively isolating speculative risks from spreading to the traditional financial system, enhancing investors' confidence in stablecoins as payment tools rather than speculative assets.

In the long run, this 'better to have less than to have more' strategy has attracted compliance institutions like Standard Chartered and Ant Group to lay out cross-border payment scenarios in the real economy, pushing stablecoins back to their original positioning of 'enhancing payment efficiency', paving the way for sustainable industry development.

However, high compliance costs and technical thresholds will push small and medium-sized startups out of the market and directly exclude decentralized innovation models like algorithmic stablecoins, leading to an initial market concentration among traditional banking giants, weakening technological diversity and competitive vitality.

Moreover, the unexpected contraction of only 3-5 licenses in the first batch, although based on risk concentration calculations, significantly compresses user choice space in the short term, which may delay the penetration speed of stablecoins in emerging scenarios such as retail payments and the metaverse.

To balance regulation and innovation, Hong Kong has set up a transition period and sandbox mechanism, allowing existing issuers to continue operating for 6 months after submitting their applications and providing space for 12 institutions including JD.com and Standard Chartered to test payment and RWA integration scenarios, reducing compliance costs through controllable trial and error.

By supporting the parallel development of Hong Kong dollar and offshore renminbi stablecoins through a 'multi-currency anchoring' strategy, it avoids reliance on a single US dollar and opens up on-chain channels for renminbi cross-border payments. For example, the Yiwu market has already tested stablecoin applications for trade settlements worth billions of dollars.

The tiered exemption rules allow unlicensed institutions to offer non-Hong Kong dollar stablecoins to professional investors, preserving flexible innovation space, while the Monetary Authority dynamically optimizes technical audit standards and other details, striving to cultivate 'regulatory-enabled innovation' above the baseline of stability.