Eddie Yue, Chief Executive at Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), remarked after the meeting by Finance Committee of Legislative Council that 36 applications for stablecoin licenses have been received, with the review process nearly complete.

Additional information, including details on application scenarios, risk management, anti-money laundering arrangements, and reserve assets, has been requested from some institutions. The authority aims to issue stablecoin licenses by March, but the number of licenses in the first round will definitely not be large.

Separately, HSBC’s computer system experienced an outage last Friday afternoon, with some users reporting an failure to log in. Yue responded that the bank has been asked to provide a detailed follow-up investigation report to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents in the future. Preliminary understanding suggested that the outage was due to an internal system issue, unrelated to any cyber attack.

Sources: aastocks