Recently, news about the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) soon announcing the first batch of stablecoin issuer licenses has garnered significant attention both inside and outside the industry. Moreover, according to rumors from authoritative media and industry insiders, out of an extreme emphasis on financial stability and conservative risk considerations, Hong Kong's first batch of stablecoin licenses are highly likely to be issued exclusively to traditional note-issuing banks or large commercial banks.
To be honest, hearing this news made me and several industry veterans break into a cold sweat. Hong Kong has clearly laid its cards on the table to build a "global digital asset hub," polishing the table for the game. But at this critical juncture of stablecoins, which can truly reshape the underlying logic of future finance, if the final decision is indeed to only let the "old money" from the traditional system sit at the table... then what we stand to lose may not just be the prospects of a few local fintech companies, but the biggest payment innovation opportunity in the Web3 and AI era.
I've been thinking these past few days: why is entrusting the most important financial innovation to traditional banks a cause for concern?
Breaking it down with commercial reality, the answer is clear.
Disruptive things rarely emerge from the center
Looking back at the financial history of the past few decades, truly game-changing innovations were mostly not born within bank buildings. Whether it was PayPal back in the day, or Alipay and WeChat Pay which later disrupted daily transactions, or cryptocurrency itself, the ones making big waves were often small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs from the fringes.
This isn't to say traditional banks are doing a bad job. The foundation of large banks is being "credit intermediaries"; they are inherently risk-averse and pursue extreme stability. This is in their DNA and is the basis for maintaining the financial system's operation.
But stablecoins are a completely different species. They are a borderless, programmable, decentralized new type of monetary vehicle, essentially a dimensional reconstruction of traditional banking business. Now, expecting note-issuing banks, accustomed to following procedures and burdened with massive compliance baggage, to lead a Web3 payment revolution that will likely disrupt their own existing profit distribution? This doesn't make commercial sense. It's asking too much.
Look who's sitting at the table across the ocean
If history seems too distant, we can look at the current global market. The ones truly pushing stablecoins towards a trillion-dollar scale are not JPMorgan Chase or Citigroup at all, but tech companies with extremely strong technical DNA.
Look at Stripe in the US, this payment giant valued at hundreds of billions of dollars just heavily invested in acquiring the stablecoin platform Bridge. I carefully read what Stripe co-founder John Collison wrote in their 2025 public letter; he didn't talk about grand concepts, but very practically stated that stablecoins represent an "improvement in the basic usability of money" and are the most innovative area in the internet economy. They are truly using code and stablecoins to reconstruct the global payment infrastructure.
Then look at Circle, which issues USDC. They long ago stopped being satisfied with just being a coin-issuing institution. Their current financial reports and actions clearly show they are integrating large language models to build the underlying network for future AI Agents.
The US strategy is already an open secret: using innovative tech companies plus stablecoins to fight the next fintech war. If Hong Kong, at this time, only gives the keys to the most important arsenal to traditional banks accustomed to playing defense, what will our local Web3 enterprises use to compete on the same stage?
In the AI era, bank systems simply can't handle machine bills
The special administrative region government is now pushing "AI+" and the digital economy with great effort, which is absolutely the right direction. But often, the underlying cost structure isn't fully thought through: what will payments look like in the AI era?
I estimate that in two or three years, the subjects of commercial transactions won't just be living people like you and me or companies, but countless AI Agents running in the cloud.
Imagine at 3 AM, your personal AI assistant, to help you run a complex video rendering model, goes online itself to find the cheapest idle computing power, then initiates cross-border API calls dozens of times per second. Can the current fiat system handle this kind of high-frequency, instant, cross-border micro-transactions that might only cost a few cents each? Traditional bank transfer fees are prohibitively expensive, and you have to wait for T+1 or T+2 settlement, with system maintenance on weekends.
The only thing that can shoulder this kind of 24/7, low-friction machine-to-machine transaction is stablecoins running on the blockchain. They can be written directly into smart contracts, allowing AI have its own wallet and spend money itself. Without this foundation, the so-called AI agent economy simply cannot function.
Some will surely ask, couldn't a large bank just issue its own stablecoin for AI to use?
Really, it can't. This touches the underlying compliance Achilles' heel of banking. Banks' KYC (Know Your Customer) and anti-money laundering systems are designed for "natural persons" and "entity enterprises." To open an account, you need to provide ID, proof of address, board resolutions. When an AI Agent, which is just a string of code, tries to spend money to buy computing power脱离 (disconnected from) a实体 account, the bank's compliance system will error out immediately. How is the system supposed to perform facial recognition on code?
Under the existing regulatory inertia, the bank system's only reasonable reaction is: this is incomprehensible, the risk is too high, service denied.
The underlying systems of the mainframe era cannot handle the new玩法 (play/ways) on-chain. To solve this generational pain point, we can only rely on independent issuers driven by technology who understand Web3 architecture. They are the ones who know how to flexibly use on-chain data and全新的 (brand new) digital identity technology to minimize the friction of machine payments within a compliant framework.
Hong Kong desperately needs "fresh troops"
I actually understand the regulators' caution during the initial licensing phase. In the context of traditional finance, issuing licenses first to well-funded large banks is the safest, most error-proof defensive move. But at a juncture of major technological paradigm shifts, excessive caution can反而 (instead) become the biggest risk—the risk of眼睁睁 (watching helplessly) missing an entire era.
The vision of a "global digital asset hub" shouldn't just be about traditional banks issuing an "on-chain version of the Hong Kong dollar" using blockchain technology and calling it a day. Hong Kong needs real Web3 entrepreneurs, needs ambitious technology enterprises to take root here and serve the global AI agent economy. Ecosystems are built through fierce competition with real investment, not by protecting turf.
In this race, Hong Kong urgently needs a group of fresh troops who understand both modern compliance logic and truly understand technology, not just rely on gatekeepers constrained by the existing system.
I sincerely hope the regulatory authorities can demonstrate greater魄力 (boldness and vision) and leave a door open for independent innovative enterprises with technical基因 (DNA). Because this decision is not about the distribution of利益 (interests) from a few licenses, but determines whether Hong Kong will be riding the waves at the prow or遗憾地 (regrettably)只能 (can only) stand on the shore sighing in the great voyage of the digital economy over the next decade.
This article is user-contributed and does not represent the views of ChainCatcher.
