Author: momo, ChainCatcher
"Hong Kong's first crypto asset stock" HashKey (stock code: 03887) officially ended its share offering at noon on December 12 and is scheduled to be listed on December 17.
Since passing the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing and the public release of its prospectus, the market has shown mixed reactions and voices regarding HashKey's IPO.
On one hand, HashKey's continuous huge losses and high-cost operating structure have raised concerns about its financial health, and its platform token HSK has been criticized as inefficient and sacrificing community interests.
On the other hand, the HashKey IPO subscription market has been continuously hot. The latest data at noon on the 12th, when the offering officially ended, showed that the total subscription funds lent through brokerage channels (margin financing) reached HKD 50.6 billion. Based on the public offering fundraising amount of HKD 167 million (approximately HKD 170 million), it was oversubscribed by 301.6 times.
Additionally, HashKey's IPO has introduced 9 well-known cornerstone investors, including UBS, Fidelity Fund, and CDH Investments, who collectively subscribed to approximately HKD 590 million in shares.
Despite constant pessimism, investors are still betting with real money on HashKey's scarcity value as "Hong Kong's major licensed compliant platform." As a slice of Hong Kong's virtual asset market development, HashKey's hot subscription also reflects the market's policy sentiment, namely the continued optimism towards Hong Kong's acceleration in building 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 accumulated an adjusted net loss of approximately HKD 1.57 billion; the loss in 2024 nearly doubled year-on-year to HKD 1.19 billion.
HashKey explained in its prospectus that in 2022, the trading platform was still in its early development stage, contributing limited revenue, and the fair value loss of digital assets also affected the 2022 financial performance. As the trading system, compliance framework, and institutional client access process were gradually improved, the company fully launched its business in 2023. In 2024, revenue from trade facilitation services reached HKD 518 million, compared to a loss of HKD 15 million in 2022, reflecting strong business expansion momentum and the effectiveness of early strategic investments.
Since 2022, HashKey has been in a period of high investment, and continuous losses are not due to poor management. Early continuous losses are actually common in platform-based companies. For example, Amazon had nearly 20 years of losses. When Amazon went public, Bezos stated in his open letter to shareholders that "it's all about the long term."
Furthermore,high investment in compliant financial infrastructure is almost inevitable in the early development stage.. For example, Coinbase, which is strategically similar to HashKey. Coinbase firmly took the compliance path from its establishment in 2012. Since 2013, it has successively obtained money transmission licenses in 46 U.S. states/regions and can operate legally in all 50 states. It is one of the few exchanges that have obtained various state licenses, FinCEN registration, and a New York trust license in the United States, spending huge amounts on compliance every year. Coinbase's investment far exceeded its revenue for many years before going public. Although it accumulated losses of approximately USD 5-6 million before its IPO, it was still accepted by Wall Street.
For large institutions and mainstream users, Coinbase is often the first or even the only choice. In the United States, subject to regulatory restrictions, many traditional funds can only use licensed trading platforms. Coinbase thus gains a natural market share, and the barriers formed by its brand and compliance are difficult for latecomers to quickly and cost-effectively replicate.
For companies like Coinbase and HashKey, extremely high security levels, risk control systems, compliance systems, and custody capabilities are required, and a large amount of fixed costs must be invested in advance.
Where did HashKey's high investment go?
Besides compliance costs, a large portion of HashKey's high investment went into technology and R&D. In 2024, HashKey's R&D expenditure reached HKD 580 million, accounting for 77.2% of its revenue.This includes developing core trading systems, security risk control systems, self-developed blockchain (HashKey Chain), and cutting-edge technologies like RWA (Real World Asset) tokenization.
Specifically, HashKey's service system includes asset custody, OTC services, institutional services, HashKey Chain public chain, RWA issuance and management, etc. Its ecological landscape can be roughly summarized as:
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Trading layer (HashKey Exchange, HashKey Global): Provides compliant deposit and withdrawal channels for retail and institutions, with cumulative trading volume exceeding HKD 1.3 trillion, attracting institutional funds, and holding a 75% market share in Hong Kong.
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Chain layer (HashKey Chain): A compliant L2 public chain focused on RWA tokenization and stablecoin issuance, bridging on-chain and off-chain, with the ecological HSK as a governance token providing continuous incentives for the on-chain ecosystem.
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Asset management layer (HashKey Capital): On one hand, custody services (Custody), with assets under management exceeding HKD 8 billion. This year, it also launched the DAT (Digital Asset Treasury) ecological fund, with an initial fundraising scale of over USD 500 million, focusing on initiating and participating in the ETH and BTC ecosystems.Additionally, HashKey Capital, as a venture capital department, makes early ecological investments, with a portfolio covering over 600 global projects.
Furthermore, HashKey's ecological landscape also includes HashKey OTC, which provides compliant digital asset over-the-counter trading services, Web3 infrastructure provider HashKey Cloud, and tokenization service agency HashKey Tokenisation.
This IPO aims to further improve the "compliant ecological closed loop of Hong Kong's virtual asset market" and provide Asia with a "scarce entry point for compliant crypto asset services."
HashKey's Positioning Value: Based in Hong Kong, Radiating to Asia
HashKey's core value has long surpassed that of a "compliant exchange" itself. It plays a strategic interface role in the next round of financial system upgrades in Hong Kong and even across Asia.
First is its uniqueEast-West channel value. Hong Kong, as a bridge between Eastern and Western financial systems, has a mature regulatory system, international financial infrastructure, and long-formed institutional synergies with the Chinese mainland market. HashKey plays the role of a "bridge between traditional finance and the Web3 world." For international institutions, it is a compliant entry point into the Chinese and Asian markets.
Second is itsleadership in the institutional market. Based on 2024 trading volume, HashKey is the largest regional onshore platform in Asia. Beyond 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 transforming from speculative products into corporate financial tools, a huge directional change globally.
As the "Asian version of Coinbase," in the process of Asian institutions accelerating their move on-chain, HashKey has almost become the only standard solution that can be adopted currently. Hong Kong's licensing system has extremely high thresholds, with all aspects from governance, risk control, custody to anti-money laundering接近 international financial standards. This regulatory intensity directly forms a quasi-monopoly barrier. Against the backdrop of the relatively低迷 Asian crypto entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, HashKey has事实上 become the ceiling for Asian institutional business.
As Hong Kong's first crypto stock, HashKey's positioning value has surpassed its business value.
HashKey恰好 stands at the风口 of Hong Kong's building of a "global virtual asset center" and the intersection of China and the West, traditional finance and virtual assets. Asian regulation and capital markets need a Coinbase-level sample. HashKey's listing is a "value pricing" of future Web3 infrastructure by the regional market. HashKey's IPO journey further reflects the grand narrative of how Asia defines its own rules, attracts global capital, and masters development initiative in the new financial era.
Therefore, despite the dismal financial situation in the prospectus, HashKey's IPO can still be oversubscribed by over 200 times,核心 is paying for its positioning value. Some investors even said that for an上市 of era symbol level, whether it breaks issue price or makes money is not that important; participating in the subscription is more like paying a few thousand dollars for the observation cost at a historical node.
Conclusion: During the trough, don't easily唱空 the Asian crypto ecosystem
When examining HashKey's IPO, simply focusing on the loss numbers很容易 overlook the larger structural logic behind it. HashKey is not a short-cycle platform that relies on trading volume for profits but is building Asia's next-generation digital financial foundation in a heavy-asset, slow-variable way.
Its positioning value in Hong Kong and the Asian financial system is far higher than its current business value. This is why, despite constant loss controversies, criticism of its platform token, and overwhelming质疑, HashKey's IPO was still oversubscribed by hundreds of times. Capital is not unable to understand its financial reports but chooses to bet with real money on the era position it occupies. HashKey is standing at this intersection.
Although not perfect, HashKey is still very scarce for the entire Asian crypto ecosystem.
Asia's crypto entrepreneurship and technological innovation ecosystem is in a trough, lacking high-quality, globally competitive fintech infrastructure companies locally. If even a company like HashKey, which is building compliance path, infrastructure, and institutional interfaces, is唱空, then it is essentially唱空 the ceiling of the entire Asian institutional business, which is毫无 beneficial to industry development.
Hong Kong is still "crossing the river by feeling the stones" in the field of virtual assets and Web3. As the龙头 in this experimental field, the market might as well have more patience and less唱衰. Perhaps we are only one step away from the next爆发 window.
