THELOGICALINDIAN - The Hong Kong Treasury absitively adjoin the angle of creating a axial coffer agenda bill CBDC bygone but said that they will adviser the situation
Hong Kong is ‘Already Efficient’
Acting Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Mr Joseph Chan, said, in a press release, that Hong Kong does not charge a CBDC at this time because it already has an able acquittal infrastructure. He did not acknowledgment whether or not Hong Kong will admit cryptocurrencies as acknowledged tender.
“The HKMA has agitated out analysis on CBDC. At the aforementioned time, the HKMA addendum that the allowances of CBDC and its ability assets will depend on the absolute affairs of a jurisdiction. In the ambience of Hong Kong, the already able acquittal basement and casework accomplish CBDC a beneath adorable proposition. The HKMA has no plan to affair CBDC at this date but will abide to adviser the all-embracing development.”
Mr Chan’s acknowledgment referenced a CBDC abstraction by the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) and the Markets Committee (MC). The abstraction states that back chief if a CBDC is appropriate, a government should accede the role of the axial bank, banking adherence and cross-border acquittal systems. It considers several furnishings of accepting a CBDC, including that it may accomplish a country’s budgetary action harder to implement.
On this study, Mr Chan said: “CBDC that could be fabricated broadly accessible to the accepted accessible and serve as an another safe, able-bodied and acceptable acquittal apparatus raises important questions and challenges that would charge to be addressed. The HKMA will abide to appoint with the axial cyberbanking community, including the PBoC, to abstraction the abeyant and the costs and allowances of implementing CBDC.”
He added that there may be beneath allowances of a CBDC if the country already has an able retail area in abode or is about to apparatus one. Hong Kong is set to accompany in a faster payments arrangement in September 2018, which is advised for the cyberbanking system, but will baby for fintech companies. In September 2017, the aforementioned official, Mr Chan, said that this will accompany in a ‘new era of acute banking.’
Fears Over Money Laundering
Yesterday, Mr Chan additionally accent the affair of bearding trading of cryptocurrencies for assuming abeyant money bed-making risks. He focused on the claim for exchanges and cryptocurrency-related businesses to accomplish Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) checks. In February, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) warned crypto exchanges that they should not abutment tokens that could be accounted securities.
The SFC has already interfered with one antecedent bread alms (ICO), which it accounted to be alms a ‘collective advance scheme.’ The Black Cell ICO, which offered users the adeptness to redeem disinterestedness shares, was ordered to not advertise any tokens to association of Hong Kong.
In accession to this, Hong Kong’s Financial Services and Treasury Bureau (FSTB) and Investor Education Center (IEC) accept launched a accumulated attack to brainwash investors about cryptocurrencies. The advice focused on the abeyant risks of cryptocurrencies and was aimed at allowance individuals to accomplish abreast investments.
