Elizabeth Wong, head of the financial technology department of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), revealed in an interview with the blockchain analysis company Elliptic on the 6th of this month that the SFC will likely launch a new version of security token issuance ( Security Token offering (STO) regulations.

In the interview, Huang Lexin said that security tokens and real world assets (Real World Assets; RWA) will no longer be classified as "non-complex" product definitions, and may even have the opportunity to be opened to retail investors. In addition, RWA may also be based on underlying assets (such as It is supervised in the form of cash, bank deposit).

SFC will likely amend the STO regulations released in 2019

Huang Lexin mentioned this time that there may be a new version of STO regulations, which can be traced back to the first version of the regulatory specifications announced by the SFC in March 2019.

At that time, SFC regarded STO as securities for sale and may be subject to supervision under Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Ordinance. Looking at STO according to the definition of SFC, it generally refers to "the issuance of specific tokens with traditional securities offering attributes" and "the use of blockchain technology to express asset ownership (such as gold or real estate) or economic rights (such as profits) in digital form. or the right to share the income), and only professional investors (such as high-net-worth clients and professional investment institutions) have the right to sell STO.

As for the security tokens and RWA listed this time, they will no longer be classified as "non-complex" products because according to the SFC's "Guidelines for Online Distribution and Investment Consulting Platforms" and the "Code of Conduct", security tokens were considered "Complex products" require intermediaries to take additional investor protection measures. If the new STO regulations come online, it will indeed be possible to open it to retail investors without the need for an intermediary.

Hong Kong regulates RWA according to the underlying assets, which in disguise reduces the advantages of RWA tokenization. In the past, Goldman Sachs Group and Société Générale have been active in the RWA field, and there may be a new wave of changes in the DeFi industry layout of multinational companies in Hong Kong. .

This article Hong Kong SFC may introduce new "security token issuance" regulations, will retail investors benefit? First appeared in Block Guest.