Hong Kong’s SFC ramps up crypto oversight with new staff

The Hong Kong SFC hires more cryptography regulators, aimed at strengthening market surveillance and accelerating exchange approvals.

Hong Kong Dubbing its ambition to become a global cryptography center, its securities regulator offering an expansion of its crypto surveillance team.

The City Securities and Futures Commission has proposed to increase its staff, with a particular emphasis on monitoring virtual asset trading platforms, improving market surveillance and strengthening the application.

In his budgetary plan For the year 2025-2026, the SFC is looking for 15 new employees, of which eight will be dedicated to the regulation of virtual assets.

The budgetary proposal, presented at a legislative council meeting on February 3, provides for recurrent SFC expenses to reach $ 2.59 billion ($ 332.4 million) for the next year – an increase of 7 , 2% compared to forecasts for the previous year.

Much of this growth – $ 130.5 million HK ($ 16.7 million) – comes from higher personnel costs, including an average salary increase of 2.1%.

Additional hires are considered to be necessary after the SFC admitted that its existing, although experienced staff, has had trouble achieving inspection objectives.

In 2023, the regulator only carried out 200 on -site inspections of approved financial companies, not exceeding its objective of 300. With additional staff, the SFC seeks to remedy this deficit and to improve its supervision of the cryptographic ecosystem from Hong Kong.

A faster path to the granting of licenses

Hong Kong worked aggressively to position itself as a regulated but attractive destination for cryptographic companies. In June 2023, the city officially launched its license regime for VATPs, allowing approved exchanges to serve retail investors in a structured setting.

This change marked a turning point, while Hong Kong was moving away from its previous position, which largely limited cryptographic access to institutional players. Since then, the government has refined its regulatory approach, in particular by advancing a framework for monitoring the stable reserve.

Meanwhile, the SFC is actively engaged with trading platforms to attach the license process. In a January press release, the Commission declared His close collaboration with the leaders of VATP, declaring that this proactive commitment helped to accelerate approvals while strengthening the expectations of compliance.

The results of this push become clear. On January 27, the SFC issuing His first two licenses of 2025, approving Panthertrade and Yax as approved cryptography exchanges. This brought the total number of VATP under license to nine Hong Kong, including Osl and Hashkey.