Recently, news about the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) soon announcing the first batch of stablecoin issuer licenses has drawn intense attention across the industry and beyond. According to reports from authoritative media outlets and industry insiders, due to an extreme emphasis on financial stability and conservative risk considerations, Hong Kong’s first batch of stablecoin licenses is highly likely to be granted exclusively to traditional note-issuing banks or large commercial banks.

Frankly speaking, upon hearing this news, several seasoned industry veterans—including myself—felt a knot in our stomachs. Hong Kong has already clearly declared its ambition to become a “Global Digital Asset Hub,” even polishing the poker table clean—but at this pivotal juncture where stablecoins could genuinely reshape the foundational logic of future finance, if the final decision truly restricts the table to only the “old money” entrenched within the traditional system… then what we’ll miss isn’t just the prospects of a few local fintech firms—it’s the largest payment innovation opportunity of the Web3 and AI era.

These past few days, I’ve been pondering deeply: why does entrusting the most critical financial innovation to traditional banks feel unsettling? When you unpack the commercial reality, the answer becomes crystal clear. Disruptive innovations rarely sprout from the center—they almost always emerge from the periphery. Flip through decades of financial history: the true game-changers were hardly born inside bank towers. Whether it was PayPal back in the day, Alipay and WeChat Pay—which later revolutionized everyday transactions—or cryptocurrency itself—the entities making real waves have consistently been SMEs and entrepreneurs operating on the fringes.

That’s not to say traditional banks do poor work. Their core business model is acting as “credit intermediaries,” and they’re inherently wired to avoid risk and pursue maximum stability. That’s their DNA—and the bedrock supporting the entire financial system. But stablecoins are an entirely different species. They’re borderless, programmable, decentralized new monetary vehicles—fundamentally representing a downward-dimensional reconstruction of traditional banking operations. So, can we realistically expect note-issuing banks—accustomed to rigid processes and burdened by massive compliance overhead—to spearhead a Web3 payment revolution that would very likely dismantle their own existing profit structures? Commercially, that simply doesn’t add up. It’s asking the impossible.

Let’s look at who’s sitting at the poker table across the Pacific. If history feels too distant, consider today’s global market. The players actually pushing stablecoins toward a multi-trillion-dollar scale aren’t JPMorgan Chase or Citigroup—it’s tech companies with exceptionally strong engineering DNA. Take Stripe, the U.S.-based payments giant valued at over $100 billion: it recently invested heavily to acquire stablecoin platform Bridge. I carefully read co-founder John Collison’s 2025 open letter—and he didn’t lean on grandiose rhetoric. He stated plainly that stablecoins represent “an improvement in the fundamental usability of money,” calling them the most innovative domain within the internet economy. They’re literally rebuilding the world’s payment infrastructure using code and stablecoins.

Then there’s Circle—the issuer of USDC—which long ago stopped seeing itself merely as a stablecoin issuer. Its latest financial reports and strategic moves make one thing unmistakably clear: Circle is now integrating large language models to build the underlying network for tomorrow’s AI Agents. America’s current strategy is laid bare: leverage innovative tech enterprises plus stablecoins to win the next-generation fintech war. So if Hong Kong, at this critical moment, hands the keys to its most vital weapons vault only to traditional banks accustomed to defense—what tools will our local Web3 firms have to compete on equal footing?

In the AI era, legacy banking systems simply cannot handle machine-generated invoices. The HKSAR Government’s vigorous promotion of “AI+” and the digital economy is absolutely the right direction. Yet too often, people overlook the foundational ledger layer: What will payments actually look like in the AI era? Within two or three years, the primary actors in commercial transactions won’t just be living humans or conventional corporations—they’ll be countless AI Agents running in the cloud. Picture this: at 3 a.m., your personal AI assistant autonomously hunts across the globe for the cheapest idle computing power to complete a complex video rendering model—and then initiates dozens of cross-border API calls per second. These ultra-high-frequency, instantaneous, micro-transactions—each potentially worth just a few cents—can today’s fiat systems even process?

Traditional bank wire transfers carry exorbitant fees and require T+1 or T+2 settlement; systems also go offline for maintenance over weekends. Only blockchain-native stablecoins can sustain this kind of round-the-clock, low-friction, machine-to-machine commerce. Stablecoins embed directly into smart contracts, enabling AI Agents to carry built-in wallets and spend autonomously. Without this foundational layer, the so-called AI Agent economy simply won’t get off the ground. Some may ask: Why not let big banks issue their own stablecoins for AI use? That won’t work—because it hits a regulatory dead zone baked into banking’s core architecture. Banks’ KYC (“Know Your Customer”) and anti-money laundering systems were designed for natural persons and legal entities. Opening an account requires ID documents, address verification, board resolutions—even facial recognition. When a purely code-based AI Agent, detached from any physical account, attempts to purchase computing power, the bank’s compliance engine immediately throws an error. How, exactly, do you perform facial recognition on a line of code? Under current regulatory inertia, the bank system’s only logical response is: “This is incomprehensible—and too risky. Service denied.” Legacy mainframe-era infrastructure cannot accommodate on-chain innovations. To solve this intergenerational pain point, we need independent issuers who deeply understand Web3 architecture and are driven by technology—not gatekeepers constrained by existing systems. Only they know how to flexibly leverage on-chain data and novel digital identity solutions to minimize friction for machine payments—all while staying fully compliant.

Hong Kong desperately needs fresh blood. I genuinely understand the regulators’ caution during the initial licensing phase. Within the context of traditional finance, awarding licenses first to well-resourced major banks is the safest, lowest-risk defensive move. But at this pivotal moment of sweeping technological paradigm shift, excessive caution risks becoming the greatest danger—the kind of danger where you watch an entire era slip away before your eyes. The vision of becoming a “Global Digital Asset Hub” shouldn’t be satisfied with traditional banks merely issuing a “blockchain-version HKD.” Hong Kong needs authentic Web3 entrepreneurs. It needs ambitious tech enterprises to take root here and serve the global AI Agent economy. Ecosystems are forged through fierce, real-world competition—not protected through artificial enclosure.

In this high-stakes race, Hong Kong urgently needs a cohort of new forces—professionals who truly grasp both modern compliance logic and cutting-edge technology—not just gatekeepers bound by legacy systems. We sincerely hope regulators demonstrate greater boldness and leave the door open for independent innovators with strong technical DNA. Because this decision isn’t about allocating a few licenses—it’s about determining whether Hong Kong will ride the winds at the bow of the ship during the next decade’s great digital economy voyage… or stand regretfully on the shore, watching it sail away.

[ChainCatcher]