Bitfire is the place Li Lin is putting his subsequent crypto wager in Hong Kong. Li is taking the buying and selling group and buying and selling setup from Avenir Group, his household workplace, and placing them into Bitfire Group, the Hong Kong-listed firm the place he’s the most important shareholder.
Bitfire, which works in wealth administration, mentioned on Wednesday that it agreed to purchase Avenir’s funding group and buying and selling methods for $1.6 million.
Li first made his identify by means of Huobi, the alternate now known as HTX. Mainland China has banned cryptocurrency buying and selling since 2021, however Hong Kong is attempting to construct itself right into a digital asset middle. Li offered a controlling stake in Huobi for about $1 billion to Justin Solar in 2022. After that, he turned his consideration to Avenir.
Bitfire brings Li’s buying and selling group into Hong Kong to lift outdoors Bitcoin cash
With the Avenir deal in place, Bitfire desires to lift outdoors capital for a regulated bitcoin-denominated asset administration product known as Alpha $BTC.
Livio Weng, chief government of Bitfire, mentioned the corporate desires to draw funding equal to greater than 10,000 Bitcoins inside a yr. On the worth cited within the supply materials, that’s about $760 million.
Livio mentioned, “Market demand for such merchandise is big,” as extra native corporations maintain Bitcoin however nonetheless would not have a straightforward option to earn returns from it.
He mentioned the Alpha $BTC technique plans to generate revenue by means of derivatives buying and selling, together with choices, utilizing both bitcoin or the IBIT ETF because the underlying asset. The goal purchasers are each crypto-native traders and Hong Kong-based corporations.
That concentrate on record issues as a result of Bitfire estimates that at the least 40 Hong Kong-listed corporations already maintain bitcoin.
So the corporate goes after a market the place corporations have already got crypto on their books and should now desire a regulated option to attempt to earn extra from these holdings.
Hong Kong builds crypto guidelines whereas US lawmakers keep caught over stablecoin and market payments
In the meantime, at one of many metropolis’s greatest Web3 occasions, officers and lawmakers talked brazenly about taking Hong Kong’s crypto push past the native market.
Eric Yip Chee-hang, government director of intermediaries on the Securities and Futures Fee, mentioned, “We is usually a little bit extra aspirational now that now we have a robust maintain regionally. We also needs to develop our affect by [increasing] publicity internationally.”
Eric added that Hong Kong had been “within the highlight” at worldwide conferences as a result of it had “achieved a lot.”
Earlier this month, the town gave out its first two licenses for stablecoin issuers. It is usually pushing forward with guidelines for crypto sellers and custodians.
Duncan Chiu Tat-kun, a member of the Legislative Council for the Know-how and Innovation constituency, mentioned on Monday that there had been “plenty of development” in the USA. He mentioned Hong Kong was paying shut consideration to US payments together with the Genius Act, which offers with stablecoins, and the Readability Act, which is supposed to set guidelines for crypto market construction.
However Duncan additionally mentioned the Readability Act has stalled as a result of the Senate continues to be coping with a struggle over stablecoin yield between banks and crypto corporations. He mentioned Hong Kong must maintain watching what occurs subsequent in Washington.
If the invoice doesn’t move this month, he mentioned it might slide to the top of 2027. He added that such a delay would gradual plenty of the legislative work within the US, particularly with uncertainty across the midterm elections in November.
Duncan mentioned, “I feel they’ve written an excellent invoice, however the political scenario won’t give readability [for] a while to the event of the market.”
He then pointed to Hong Kong’s “regular progressive build-up” in digital asset regulation in contrast with the altering floor within the US earlier than Donald Trump took workplace in January 2025 and after the Biden administration had taken a tough line in opposition to crypto corporations.
