From Financial Powerhouse to Digital Asset Hub: Hong Kong Powering Financial Innovation with Cutting-edge Technology

As the global economy accelerates its digital transformation, digital assets have emerged as a new engine of growth, attracting intense interest from governments and businesses alike.

With unprecedented resolve, Hong Kong has set its sights on becoming a “global digital-asset hub.” After publishing its first Policy Statement on Development of Virtual Assets in Hong Kong in 2022, the territory upgraded its strategy this June with the Policy Statement 2.0. The new document signals a shift from simply “building the framework” to “deepening the ecosystem and broadening applications.” In short, a finance-born international metropolis is now racing to construct the technological engine that will propel its future.

Hong Kong’s Ambition: More Than a Financial Center

In the league table of global financial centers, New York and London have long formed a stable first tier. Against this backdrop, the competition among Asian centers is eye-catching. According to the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI)published by Z/Yen, Hong Kong scored 760 points, surpassing Singapore and firmly reclaiming the top spot in Asia. Its overall score rose by 11 points, leaving it just two points behind London and further solidifying its global standing.

Close to 270,000 people work in finance in Hong Kong, a sector that generates nearly a quarter of local GDP. The city’s appeal continues to grow: in the first half of 2025 the Hong Kong Stock Exchange led the world with US$14 billion raised, and Boston Consulting Group predicts Hong Kong will overtake Switzerland by 2029 to become the world’s largest cross-border wealth-management center. Yet its vision extends further—to become the premier global hub of the digital-asset.Hong Kong, while leveraging its unique gateway to mainland China and deep financial heritage, trailed in tech ecosystem maturity and application innovation.

The city now realizes that policy openness and financial heritage alone are not enough. It needs a technology nfrastructure that is secure and compliant, assets that are trust-anchored, transactions that are fast and inexpensive, privacy that co-exists with regulation, and blockchains that interoperate globally.

Accordingly, Hong Kong is investing heavily and attracting worldwide resources into core areas such as base-layer blockchain architecture, cross-chain connectivity, smart-contract security and performance, and privacy computing—paving the way for breakthroughs in stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). Through its Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises, more than 80 tech firms have already been recruited, while over 300 Web3 companies now cluster in Cyberport, creating a powerful flywheel of talent and technology that continuously raises the city’s “tech density.”

Tech Firms: The Key Factor in Hong Kong’s Future

How have technology companies responded to Hong Kong’s clarion call? Ant Digital Technologies provides a vivid example. Ant Digital Technologies announced that it would fully open four core technologies—Layer 2, large-model development tools, blockchain + IoT architecture, and its Web3 wallet—and systematically open-source its trusted base layer, TrustBase 1.0. The move dramatically lowers the barrier to innovation, attracting global developers to deploy in Hong Kong and enriching the local tech ecosystem.

Blockchain is the foundational infrastructure for digital-asset circulation. Since 2016 Ant Digital Technologies has pursued independent R&D, amassing formidable IP and building an open architecture that supports 200,000 CTPS, secures on-chain finality within seconds, and manages petabyte-scale ledgers. The company has topped the global rankings for blockchain patents for years.

To serve Hong Kong’s growing appetite for RWA, stablecoins, and other digital-asset scenarios, Ant Digital Technologies has built a set of technologies stack covering security, trusted asset anchoring, high-performance circulation, and compliant oversight. Leveraging Ant Group’s two decades of payment technology—and real-world testing in 200+ countries under billion-level concurrency—the company is transplanting its enterprise-grade payment capabilities to enable instant settlement and cross-chain movement of tokenized funds and assets.

Crucially, Ant Digital Technologies is open-sourcing its core capabilities. Through TrustBase it has released years of accumulated technology, pledging to “open-source each component once mature,” and thus catalyze an open, collaborative, and self-reinforcing global digital-technology ecosystem.

Convergence: Where Ambition Meets Technology

Hong Kong offers a world-class financial system, a welcoming regulatory climate, vast market potential, and a crystal-clear strategy to become the global digital-asset center. For technology firms such as Ant Digital Technologies, the city is an ideal stage.

In April this year Ant Digital Technologies chose Hong Kong as its overseas headquarters. As a core member of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Project Ensemble, the company has leveraged its closed-loop tech to create a “Mainland asset – Hong Kong verification – global circulation” model within a strict compliance framework.

Ant Digital Technologies uses AntChain to provide compliant RWA on-chain services for new-energy assets such as EV charging piles, photovoltaics, and battery-swap stations. And, tokenized assets circulate globally via chains like Jovay. The model is already live in RWA projects for companies including Longshine Group and GCL Energy Technology, validating both technical soundness and commercial value.

This convergence represents a profound integration of an international financial center’s evolution blueprint with cutting-edge digital capabilities. When Hong Kong’s financial DNA is infused with the technologies, its vision for a “Global Digital Asset Innovation Hub” gains distinctive competitive differentiation. The final outcome may not be a zero-sum game—but one thing is clear: whoever commands the technology will likely become the super-node connecting the world in the coming era.