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What impact will Hong Kong's pioneering opening of crypto asset pledges bring?
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The staking mechanism has become one of the most important on-chain economic activities in the virtual asset ecosystem, especially for public chains that adopt the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. It not only maintains network security and normal operation, but also becomes the main channel for institutions and users to obtain on-chain income. According to incomplete statistics from OKG Research, as of early April 2025, more than 34 million ETH have been staked in the Ethereum network, accounting for 28.03% of its total supply; the staking rate of projects such as Cardano and Solana has also been maintained at more than 70% for a long time. This shows that staking, as a widely accepted on-chain income mechanism, has a strong market consensus foundation.
The approval of pledge services by Hong Kong is not simply a relaxation of regulation, but also reflects deeper considerations in system design: on the basis of ensuring investors' rights and interests and controllable risks, it will push Hong Kong's virtual asset market towards a more mature and international stage of development.
Since Hong Kong approved the listing and trading of the first batch of virtual asset spot ETFs in 2024, although the market reaction is rational and the product mechanism is robust, the overall trading activity and asset management scale have not yet met market expectations. The lack of an endogenous income mechanism makes this type of product still relatively simple compared to traditional income funds. The introduction of a pledge mechanism can not only bring additional sources of income, but also provide ETFs with a closer linkage with the blockchain ecosystem, which is expected to attract a wider range of investors, especially institutional investors who focus on the balance of income + asset allocation.
Opening up ETF pledge is also an important step for Hong Kong to build a closed loop of Web3 financial ecology. Since the establishment of VASP licensing mechanism and the permission for retail investors to participate in transactions, the compliance framework of Hong Kong's virtual asset market has gradually taken shape. However, if we want to move towards a truly deep and resilient Web3 ecology, asset issuance and trading alone are far from enough. We still need to make simultaneous progress in on-chain operating capabilities, revenue models and compliance guarantee systems. The introduction of the on-chain pledge mechanism is the first attempt to incorporate DeFi native functions into traditional finance, and to establish an institutionalized and sustainable income linkage bridge between on-chain finance and traditional capital markets.
In the future, whether the United States approves the Ethereum ETF pledge function may once again have an important impact on the design of global virtual asset products. As institutions such as Coinbase and Grayscale continue to promote policy communication, the SEC's attitude towards the pledge mechanism may be marginally loosened. According to the latest disclosure by foreign media, pilot applications for some pledge functions have entered the final evaluation stage. If the United States finally approves it, it will trigger the global market's renewed attention to pledge-type ETF-related products, and will also create competitive pressure on Hong Kong's existing product structure. But before that, Hong Kong is expected to attract more international capital that focuses on "on-chain returns" to the Asia-Pacific market with the speed of policy implementation and institutional clarity, thereby further consolidating its leading edge in the global virtual asset and digital financial innovation landscape.
