This week has started with a groundbreaking fund launch, the first SFC-regulated crypto fund in Hong Kong for professional investors. This now gives financial institutions a clear vehicle to get simple exposure to Bitcoin.
But the achievement took two years of volatile fortunes – in the markets, in negotiations, and in the management team.
On April 20, Venture Smart Asia announced it got the go-ahead from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to launch the territory’s first regulated virtual-assets fund.
This caps a long back-and-forth with the regulators, with Venture Smart ultimately agreeing to a 38-page booklet of terms and conditions on top of the usual type-9 license the SFC grants for managing assets.
That’s an incredible amount of compliance for what appears to be a simple product: a tracker fund that matches the price of Bitcoin for SFC-defined professional investors (institutions and high-net-worth individuals).