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Regulators in Hong Kong are urging banks to provide much-needed services to crypto companies as part of a multi-faceted push to establish the city as an industry hub.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it expects that “regulated virtual asset service providers (VASPs) will be able to successfully apply for a bank account through a reasonable process,” in a blog post published April 27 and signed by Arthur Yuen, the watchdog’s deputy chief executive.

In a circular sent later the same day, the HKMA said banks should support licensed crypto firms with “their legitimate need for bank accounts,” according to a Bloomberg report.  

The updates come after Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission signalled yesterday that it would publish guidelines on its licensing regime for crypto exchanges in May.

It’s all part of a push to establish Hong Kong as a crypto-friendly jurisdiction, even as other regulators in other major financial hubs crack down on the sector. In the U.S., authorities have been piling pressure on the crypto industry — in part by shuttering lenders, such as Signature Bank and Silvergate Banks, that had worked closely with startups in the space.  While in Europe, the lobby group CryptoUK wrote to the government last month to complain about British banks blocking transfers to crypto exchanges. 

Hong Kong crypto trading

The Block reported on Feb. 20 that Hong Kong was planning to lift a ban on retail trading of cryptocurrencies. The SFC said at the time that it was looking “to strike a better balance between investor protection and market development.”

In the blog post published yesterday, Yuen said, “In recent months we have actively discussed with banks and reminded them that there is no legal and regulatory requirement prohibiting banks in Hong Kong from providing banking services to virtual assets (VA) related entities.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The new release, version 5.5.0, is part of an effort to “deliver a solid and reliable user experience.”

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Crypto shows that ideas can be valuable, even if they’re not useful … yet.

Arbitrum Co-Founder and Offchain Labs CEO Stephen Goldfeder said that communication in the lead up to a failed proposal earlier this month that aimed to return 700 million ARB governance tokens had been less than ideal.

“There was an unfortunate miscommunication, and it was definitely a mistake,” he said at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference on Thursday. “If you’re looking back in hindsight, it’s obvious, but it wasn’t obvious at the time.”

The Ethereum Layer 2 scaling project was forced to backtrack on a proposal in early April after token holders who control the protocol’s decentralized autonomous organization staged a revolt by voting to stop the planned transfer of ARB tokens worth about $1 billion meant to capitalize the Arbitrum Foundation. The move raised questions about the nature of DAOs, and whether or not they could every truly be decentralized.

Arbitrum developers initially called it “ratification” instead of what many thought should have been a more of a consultation. Goldfeder said the information hadn’t been clear.

Arbitrum decentralization

“The DAO is the most decentralized DAO that exists,” Goldfeder said. “I, as a community member, actually think that the place where this ended is even better, and and the community seems happy … the community ended up in an even stronger place from that incident.”

Goldfeder said that it was harder to build a community than technology. 

“We know how to build technology,” he said. “But then there’s the question of building the community and people that actually care about it…there’s a massive community with many different interests and companies and protocols and projects that care deeply about this. And that’s critical, because all technology can be there, but if there’s no one that actually wants to partake and offer their opinion and vote and argue and debate. That’s bad. We want all this discussion, and I’m glad that it’s there.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

On a panel discussing how to protect your identity, the consensus was that SBTs were absolutely the wrong path.

Star Trek actor William Shatner is releasing an NFT collection Infinite Connections, filled with artwork with science and technology themes.

Adam Draper, an early investor in the crypto exchange, made the comment on stage at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference.

The whistleblower turned security consultant also says the internet’s basic infrastructure is not suited to privacy.

BTC dipped slightly during U.S. morning trading Thursday after the Commerce Department reported a slow 1.1% gain in GDP for the first quarter – below consensus expectations of 2% annualized – but later rebounded.