Hong Kong’s police drive and the particular administrative area’s main securities regulator, the Securities and Futures Fee (SFC) have established a joint job drive to watch suspicious exercise on crypto exchanges.
A assertion printed by the SFC yesterday says the duty drive was established after a high-level assembly between the 2 authorities on September 28. Its fundamental function is to boost their collaboration in monitoring suspicious and unlawful actions on Digital Asset Buying and selling Platforms (VATPs), or crypto exchanges.
The duty drive consists of members of the police drive’s Industrial Crime, Cyber Safety Monetary Intelligence, and Investigations divisions, along with representatives from the SFC’s Enforcement and Intermediaries divisions.
The acknowledged goal of the working group is to share info on suspicious and unlawful change actions, develop a mechanism to evaluate the chance of suspicious exchanges and collaborate and combine their companies’ actions in associated investigations.
Hong Kong clamps down post-JPEX
Hong Kong’s new job drive comes because the city-state wrangles with the latest JPEX incident: a case of suspected fraud involving a Dubai-based crypto change working in Hong Kong with out licensing.
There are considered a minimum of 2,305 victims of the incident, who collectively have been defrauded of HK$1.43 billion ($182.9 million), making JPEX one of many largest circumstances of monetary fraud in Hong Kong historical past.
On September 25, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Fee (SFC) introduced new measures to boost transparency and safety within the cryptocurrency house.
The measures embody the publication of a complete checklist containing licensed, deemed-licensed, closing down, and application-pending VATPs.
All this is available in wake of a sudden surge in cryptocurrencies within the metropolis. In accordance with a latest report by blockchain information platform Chainalysis, latest inflows to Hong Kong have rivaled that of mainland China over the previous yr, regardless of internet hosting solely 0.5% of the latter’s inhabitants.
In 2021, China enacted a sweeping crackdown on crypto mining and buying and selling actions inside its borders, however Hong Kong’s extra welcoming stance might immediate mainland policymakers to undertake a softer stance, says Chainalysis.
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