Hong Kong authorized on Monday (26) the world's first secondary trading of tokenized funds offered to the public, according to the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). The measure allows investors to buy and sell shares in two money market funds 24 hours a day, including on weekends, on a platform licensed for digital asset trading.
The first authorized products are the ChinaAMC HKD Digital Money Market Fund and the ChinaAMC USD Digital Money Market Fund, denominated in Hong Kong dollars and U.S. dollars, respectively. Both already had regulatory authorization and now have secondary trading through PantherTrade, a platform linked to the Futu Holdings group.
The change allows already-issued shares to be traded directly among investors, without relying on subscription or redemption requests to the administrator for each transaction. In practice, the funds gain a trading channel that operates outside traditional financial market hours.
The authorization puts into operation the regulatory framework presented by the SFC in April 2026, which establishes requirements for fair price formation, liquidity provision, transparency and investor protection.
Continuous trading does not eliminate price risks
Uninterrupted trading does not mean that shares will necessarily be bought or sold at the fund's net asset value. Because secondary market prices depend on offers from buyers and sellers, differences relative to the value of the underlying assets may occur.
To reduce this risk, the rules require disclosure of indicative net asset values, alert mechanisms for significant price deviations, and information on liquidity. The SFC itself recognizes that periods outside conventional financial hours, especially weekends, may present lower liquidity and larger differences between trading prices and net asset value.
Elisa Ng, executive director of investment products at the SFC, said that the authorization represents an important step to test the regulatory framework and incorporate continuous trading into Hong Kong's tokenized asset market.
The regulator also intends to explore the integration of these funds with tokenized deposits developed in collaboration with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, through the Project Ensemble. The initiative seeks to enable more efficient transfers of funds from trading, but this integration remains a future possibility.
Initially, the authorization covers only the two money market funds. The SFC will monitor the operations before evaluating the expansion of the model to other categories of financial products.
