According to Mars Finance, on August 15, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a circular to all licensed virtual asset trading platforms today, clarifying its requirements for the robust custody of customer virtual assets. This lays a solid foundation for the industry to progressively adopt more advanced custody technologies under the ASPIRe roadmap. In the latest circular, the SFC listed several good operating practices and minimum standards that virtual asset trading platform operators should meet, covering responsibilities of senior management, infrastructure and operations of customer cold wallets, utilization of third-party wallets, and real-time threat monitoring, among others. In the future, these standards will also become core regulatory requirements for virtual asset custodians and will help promote the establishment of an effective virtual asset custody framework in the industry. (Jinshi)