As the town makes a giant push to change into a digital asset and Web3 hub, the reviews provide insights for market contributors and regulators, domestically and internationally, which is able to assist kind coverage initiatives and market improvements, Fung stated at a media briefing on Tuesday.

HKIMR coordinated with consultancy PwC to conduct the 2 surveys, learning organisations within the asset and wealth administration, banking, insurance coverage, digital asset and metaverse service industries.

A complete of 59 entities took half within the survey on DeFi, which is the supply of monetary companies with out conventional monetary intermediaries, providing a less expensive, accessible and safe different. In the meantime, 55 establishments joined the survey on metaverse, a expertise platform to expertise digital actuality.

Native market contributors are more and more eager on digital property. Greater than half of the monetary establishments within the DeFi survey have already included such property into their core enterprise operations, whereas 85 per cent count on to have carried out so three years from now.

Within the metaverse research, 65 per cent of the respondents stated they’re concerned within the digital actuality world with functions starting from advertising and promotion to inside operations and from expertise recruitment to office social occasions that assist promote “interactions with customers, employees and the general public”, stated Giorgio Valente, head of HKIMR.

A typical problem is the dearth of expertise and experience, which impacts the progress of the adoption of those applied sciences, in accordance with the reviews. Different key hurdles embrace uncertainty in governance buildings, authorized and regulatory compliance, cybersecurity and information administration dangers.

Fung stated the tenet for regulating monetary improvements worldwide has been “same activity, same risk, same regulation” with some native nuances.

“The broad direction [in] the overall international community is to provide a certain level of consistency, coordination and collaboration on many aspects,” Fung stated, referring to monitoring dangers and information gaps.

“Hong Kong regulators have been very active in participating in those regulatory discussions. We have a role to play in the international standard-setting bodies, providing our input and consolidating our role as an international financial centre.”