According to a report by Caixin on August 22, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority recently issued a circular confirming that starting from January 1, 2026, it will fully implement new banking capital regulations based on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's standards for crypto assets in Hong Kong. This includes not only Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are defined as crypto assets by the Basel Committee, but also RWA and stablecoins. Industry insiders pointed out that Ethereum is a typical representative of permissionless blockchain technology, and almost all mainstream stablecoins and an increasing number of RWAs are generally issued on public chains. Under the expectation that the new regulations will be implemented as scheduled, the willingness of the Hong Kong banking system to hold such stablecoins or RWAs will inevitably be affected.
However, both the Basel Committee and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority have made it clear that the Basel regulatory standards for crypto assets generally will not impose capital requirements for credit or market risk on banks for crypto assets held in custody for clients, provided that the client's crypto assets are isolated from the bank's own assets.
