Written by: momo, ChainCatcher
The 'first stock of cryptocurrency assets in Hong Kong' HashKey (stock code: 03887) officially ended its subscription at noon on December 12 and is scheduled to officially list on December 17.
Since passing the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing and the public offering prospectus, the market has shown different voices and reactions regarding HashKey's IPO.
On one hand, HashKey's continued massive losses and high-cost operating structure have raised concerns about its financial health, and its platform token HSK has also been criticized for being inefficient and sacrificing community interests.
On the other hand, the subscription market for HashKey IPO continues to be hot. The latest data, as of noon on the 12th, shows that the total amount of subscription funds borrowed through brokerage channels (margin financing) reached 50.6 billion HKD. With a public offering fundraising amount of 167 million HKD (approximately 170 million HKD), it was oversubscribed by 301.6 times.
In addition, HashKey's IPO has introduced 9 well-known cornerstone investors including UBS, Fidelity, and DCM, with a total subscription of about 590 million Hong Kong dollars in shares.
Despite the continuous pessimism, investors are still betting real money on HashKey's rare value as 'Hong Kong's main licensed compliance platform'. As a slice of Hong Kong's virtual asset market development, the enthusiastic subscription of HashKey further reflects the market's policy sentiment, that is the continued optimism about Hong Kong's acceleration in creating a 'global virtual asset center'.
High investment period ≠ poor management
The business logic that pessimists should understand: high investment period ≠ poor management. According to the prospectus, from 2022 to 2024, HashKey's cumulative adjusted net loss is about 1.57 billion Hong Kong dollars; the loss in 2024 nearly doubled to 1.19 billion Hong Kong dollars.
HashKey explained in its prospectus that in 2022, the trading platform was still in the early development stage, with limited revenue contribution from the sector, and the fair value loss of digital assets also affected the financial performance in 2022. With the gradual improvement of the trading system, compliance framework, and institutional client access processes, the company fully launched its business in 2023, and the revenue from trading facilitation services reached 518 million Hong Kong dollars in 2024, while the loss recorded in 2022 was 15 million Hong Kong dollars, reflecting a strong business expansion momentum and the effectiveness of early strategic investments.
Since 2022, HashKey has been in a high investment period, and continuous losses do not equate to poor management. Early-stage continuous losses are actually quite common among platform-type enterprises; for example, Amazon had nearly 20 years of losses, and when Amazon went public, Bezos stated in his open letter to shareholders, 'Everything needs to be planned for the long term.'
In addition, the high investment in compliant financial infrastructure is almost inevitable in the early development stage. For example, Coinbase, which is strategically similar to HashKey, firmly chose the compliant path since its establishment in 2012 and obtained money transmission licenses in 46 states/regions in the United States from 2013 onwards, legally operating in all 50 states. It is one of the few exchanges in the United States to obtain state licenses, FinCEN registration, and a New York trust license, incurring huge costs in compliance every year. Coinbase invested far more than its revenue for several consecutive years before its IPO; despite an accumulated loss of about 500-600 million dollars before going public, it was still accepted by Wall Street.
For large institutions and mainstream users, Coinbase is often the first choice or even the only option. Due to regulatory restrictions in the United States, many traditional funds can only use licensed trading platforms, which gives Coinbase a natural market share, and the barriers formed by its brand and compliance are difficult for latecomers to replicate quickly and at low cost.
For companies like Coinbase and HashKey, extremely high levels of security, risk control systems, compliance systems, and custody capabilities require substantial fixed costs to be invested in advance.
Where does HashKey's high investment go?
HashKey's high investment, in addition to compliance costs, has a significant portion in technology and R&D. In 2024, HashKey's R&D expenditure reached 580 million Hong Kong dollars, accounting for 77.2% of revenue. This specifically includes the development of core trading systems, security risk control systems, self-developed blockchain (HashKey Chain), and RWA (real-world asset) tokenization and other cutting-edge technologies.
Specifically, HashKey's service system includes asset custody, OTC services, institutional services, HashKey Chain public chain, RWA issuance and management, etc. Its ecological layout can be roughly summarized as:
Trading Layer (HashKey Exchange, HashKey Global): Provides compliant recharge and withdrawal channels for retail and institutional clients, with a cumulative trading volume exceeding 13 trillion Hong Kong dollars, attracting institutional funds and occupying 75% of the Hong Kong market share.
On-chain Layer (HashKey Chain): Compliant L2 public chain focusing on RWA tokenization and stablecoin issuance, bridging on-chain and off-chain, with HSK serving as the governance token to provide continuous incentives for the on-chain ecosystem.
Asset Management Layer (HashKey Capital): On one hand, it provides custody services, with an asset management scale exceeding 8 billion Hong Kong dollars. This year, it also launched the DAT (Digital Asset Treasury) ecological fund, with an initial fundraising scale of over 500 million USD, focusing on initiating and participating in ETH and BTC ecosystems. In addition, HashKey Capital, as a venture capital department, conducts early ecological investments, with a portfolio covering over 600 projects globally.
In addition, HashKey's ecological layout also includes providing compliant digital asset OTC trading services through HashKey OTC, Web 3 infrastructure provider HashKey Cloud, and tokenization service agency HashKey Tokenisation.
This IPO aims to further improve the 'compliance ecological closed loop of Hong Kong's virtual asset market', providing Asia with a 'rare compliant crypto asset service entry'.
HashKey's positioning value: based in Hong Kong, radiating to Asia
HashKey's core value has long surpassed that of being a 'compliant exchange' itself; it bears the strategic interface role of Hong Kong and even the entire Asia in the next round of financial system upgrades.
First, there is the unique value of the East-West corridor. Hong Kong, as a bridge between Eastern and Western financial systems, has a mature regulatory system, international financial infrastructure, and a long-term institutional synergy advantage with the Chinese mainland market. HashKey plays the role of a 'bridge between traditional finance and the Web 3 world'. For international institutions, it is a compliant entry point into the Chinese and Asian markets.
Secondly, there is leadership in the institutional market; based on trading volume in 2024, HashKey is the largest regional onshore platform in Asia. Besides trading business, based on staked assets, HashKey is also the largest on-chain service provider in Asia and the largest digital asset management institution based on assets under management.
Crypto assets are transitioning from speculative products to corporate financial tools, which is a huge directional shift globally.
As the 'Asian version of Coinbase', during the rapid on-chain process of Asian institutions, HashKey has almost become the only standard solution currently available. The threshold for Hong Kong's licensing system is extremely high, with all aspects from governance, risk control, custody to anti-money laundering approaching international financial standards, and this regulatory intensity directly forms a quasi-monopoly threshold. Against the backdrop of the relatively low tide of Asia's crypto entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, HashKey has indeed become the ceiling of institutional business in Asia.
As Hong Kong's first crypto stock, HashKey's positioning value has already surpassed its business value.
HashKey happens to be at the forefront of Hong Kong's creation of a 'global virtual asset center' and at the intersection of East and West, traditional finance, and virtual assets. Asia's regulatory and capital markets need a Coinbase-level example, and HashKey's listing is a 'value pricing' of the regional market for future Web 3 infrastructure. The IPO journey of HashKey further reflects how Asia defines its own rules, attracts global capital, and takes the initiative in development in the new financial era.
Therefore, despite the bleak financial situation in the prospectus, HashKey's IPO was still oversubscribed by more than 200 times, the core is to pay for its positioning value. Some investors even stated that for a symbol-level listing of an era, whether it breaks or gains is not that important, and participating in the subscription feels more like an observation cost of a historical node paid in a few thousand dollars.
Conclusion: In a downturn, do not easily be bearish on the Asian crypto ecosystem
When examining HashKey's IPO, simply focusing on the loss figures makes it easy to overlook the larger structural logic behind it. HashKey is not a short-cycle platform that relies on trading volume for profit, but is building the next generation of digital financial infrastructure in Asia with heavy assets and slow variables.
Its positioning value in Hong Kong and Asia's financial system is far higher than its current business value. This is also why, despite ongoing loss controversies, the platform token being criticized, and a flood of doubts, HashKey's IPO still saw oversubscription by more than a hundred times. Capital does not fail to understand its financial report, but chooses to bet real money on its occupied position in this era. HashKey is standing at this intersection.
Despite its imperfections, HashKey remains very rare for the entire Asian crypto ecosystem.
Asia's crypto entrepreneurship and technological innovation ecosystem are currently at a low tide, with a lack of high-quality, globally competitive fintech infrastructure companies. If even a company like HashKey, which is building compliant pathways, infrastructure, and institutional interfaces, is being bearish, it is essentially bearish on the entire institutional business ceiling in Asia, which is not beneficial for the industry's development.
Hong Kong is still 'feeling its way across the river' in the virtual asset and Web 3 fields. As the leader of this experimental field, the market might as well be more patient and less pessimistic; perhaps we are only a step away from the next explosive window.
