Hong Kong's true goal is never to stabilize the coin.

Original author: Will Abount

After jumping last month, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority finally issued its first certificate of stability: HSBC and Scum, and our previous articleHONG KONG DOLLAR STABILITY, NO NEED TO BECOME USDCThe analysis is consistent。

While the results themselves are not sceptical, they are disappointing。

He has recently been watching the geopolitics game of Jiang Qin teacher, and Rain has also written a well-designed "Ying scheme" for Hong Kong stabilization currency. I'd like to try to re-examine this deal from the point of view of gaming, with a smile from Tobo。

The logic behind the Trump Iranian war is as follows: it appears to be a stupid defeat. But what if we trade the game for a hypothesis -- that's what Trump wants, that's a "failure"? Then he could be a genius。

In this article, the same framework is applied to Hong Kong's stabilization currency to assume that there is a top “moderate”。

I. A list of disappointments for everyone

The first stabilization plates issued yesterday by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority were the most unwanted version of the market:

Scum, HSBC; China and Hong Kong were absent。

The result is disappointing. Instead of serving as a natural interest in the Hong Kong dollar stabilization currency, China and Hong Kong, which have a strategic will, are being hidden and important scenarios — issuers, exchanges, Internet companies — are systematically excluded from the legislative consultation stage。

After the first plates were issued, Hong Kong's Stable Currency narrative was sentenced to death。

BUT IF YOU WERE HKMA, WOULD YOU CHOOSE SUCH A LIST

You have the full 2024 project Ensemble sandbox experience, and you've seen all the cases of the digital renminbi going from line creation to promotion, you hold the SFC + HKMA & nbsp; the natural advantage of the two-track system -- and then you choose a list that doesn't even run through the most basic commercial loops

Unless this list, which disappoints everyone, is not intended to satisfy the market。

II. A reverse reasoning: What if it was wrong at the outset

A new framework is needed to understand the list。

I've been watching the game theory series of Quantico. On April 2nd, when he spoke about the war in Tehran, I was struck by one of the words:

I understand Donald Trump wants to lose his war in the Middle East

#18, April 2, 2026

Jiang's reasoning is simple: if you assume Trump is going to win, he's stupid enough to explain every step. But if the other way around is to assume – that he wants to “lost this war” and shift global energy dependence to North America with a controlled Middle East collapse – all the seemingly idiotic moves immediately turn into a coherent strategy。

This is called & nbsp; Managed Collapse. It is not to avoid failure, it is to create a failure for its own benefit。

back then, if you assume that the goal of this deal is "to be a big hong kong dollar stable currency industry," then none of the details are necessarily explained — to the least motivated institutions, to the extent that the threshold is commercially unworkable, to the business logic of repeated callenge applicants, to the exclusion of the most strategic subjects。

But what if a different hypothesis — this deal was supposed to support — is not the business stable currency industry itself

Then everything's fine。

Following this assumption, the three lines of scenes, institutions and infrastructure are right。

III. The scenery level: three hypocritical questions

EACH APPLICANT TELLS THREE STORIES: CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS, RWA, C-END CONSUMPTION。

But none of them can stand。

A. CROSS-BORDER PAYMENTS ARE HYPOCRITICAL

The typical link is: A national firm uses French currency mint stable currency A for second-tier market stability currency B for payment to B national enterprise and B for ransom. The essence is to allow banks to monopolize foreign exchange operations to reduce costs through the Web3 Exchange - This is the financial inclusion of SMEs and it is logical。

But in this chain, the life cycle of a stable currency is only at the moment of transfer。

B. NATIONAL ENTERPRISES RECEIVE A STABLE CURRENCY, AND UNLESS THEY IMMEDIATELY MAKE THE NEXT TRADE, THEY STILL NEED IT, OR THEY NEED IT. WHAT YOU NEED IS NOT A ONE-TIME TRANSFER, BUT A CLOSED LOOP WITH THE NEXT RECEIVER。

It's important that Rain light up -- more deadly is the Fisher equation. MV = PT, currency flows multiplied by the rate of circulation equal to the price multiplied by social output. Stable currency flows along the chain are one order of magnitude or more faster than conventional bank clearing。

This means that the stable currency stock needed to sustain the same volume of trade is even smaller. The more successful cross-border payments are, the lower the demand for stable currency deposits。

It's not a ring, it's a back ring。

B. RWA IS A HYPOCRITICAL QUESTION

THE RWA IS ESSENTIALLY THE SAME THING: THE MONETIZATION OF ASSET SHARES。

The fund-raiser is for a stable currency, but the asset manager has to buy a lower asset when he gets it, and the asset seller will hardly accept a stable currency – the purpose of securitization is to withdraw or optimize cash flows, and no one is willing to take it。

AS A RESULT, THE STABILIZATION CURRENCY IS IN THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE RWA SCENE, WITH ONLY A COLLECTION PERIOD。

C. C. END-USER CONSUMPTION

The Hong Kong retail market is too small to mention it。

ALL THREE STORIES ARE HYPOCRITICAL. HKMA, AS THE CUSTODIAN OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS, KNOWS THIS BETTER THAN ANY APPLICANT。

Then why does it have to deal

Institutional level: a voluntary list

HSBC and scum fights may not have come with strategic will。

hsbc, on this side, could be passive participation applications. this is a matter of reason — the strategic focus of hsbc is no longer on stable currencies, but on tokenized deposits. for hsbc, applying for a hong kong dollar stabilization is more a defensive exercise than a proactive strategy。

The slag is somewhat proactive, but for it, Hong Kong is only a node in the global landscape. HKD stabilizers can access its Libera platform, but Hong Kong has never been its main battlefield。

China-Gin Hong Kong — absent。

Strange? Not at all. As long as you understand that Hong Kong is designing a mechanism to make "voluntary" the best option:

Rule number one: licence plates will be issued only for money. Okay

It immediately created an exclusive club. If HSBC does not apply, it means that in future Hong Kong dollar digital orbit only one name will be given. This is an irresistible symbolic loss for an institution that treats Hong Kong dollar bills as core assets of 160 years brand. So HSBC has to talk。

Rule 2: High technical and compliance threshold

THE SET OF HSM MACHINES, ANTI-MONEY-LAUNDERING STRUCTURES, CHAIN SURVEILLANCE AND RESERVE ASSET POOLS, BUILT AT THE LEVEL OF TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, HAS TRANSFORMED THE ISSUE OF THE STABILIZATION CURRENCY INTO A PURELY COSTED INVESTMENT, NOT A BUSINESS. WHEN NORMAL BUSINESS COUNTS, ROI WILL QUIT. BUT HSBC CAN'T GET AWAY WITH IT — THE FIRST RULE HAS LOCKED THEM UP。

They're not here to make money, they're here not to lose their seats。

rule 3: repeated challenge business logic

This is the best. The applicants were asked the same question repeatedly at the interview stage: why did you send it yourself instead of using others? It's like telling the applicant clearly in advance -- I don't care if you make money. And the only answer to the applicants who can stay is: "I can help Hong Kong run the building."

The three rules are stacked together, and nothing is actually forced。

HSBC is a “voluntary” application, a “voluntary” investment of tens of millions of dollars, and a “voluntary” payment of user education and site development costs. But each of their "voluntary" options is the best one under the pre-established rules of the Hong Kong government。

It's not an order. It's a design。

The absence of China's capitalist Hong Kong was no longer surprising — the most strategic subject, rather than a capital contractor. The subjects with strong strategic will will make the currency their own commercial product, their own rhythm and demands. It is not a commercial product, it is capital。

Besides, China is already on another line。

V. INFRASTRUCTURE: IMPROVING AN INDUSTRIAL THING

HKMA really wants to do e-HKD。

e-HKD is the Hong Kong digital currency, the Hong Kong digital currency. The objective is clear: to gradually relocate inter-bank settlements and mass retail payments to Hong Kong currency chains issued by central banks. This is the next generation of financial infrastructure that the HK government has been pushing over the past few years and is the end of the overall strategy。

Project Ensemble Sandbox in 2024 was the first attempt on the e-HKD path: Bank and Port to maintain union chains, monetized deposits, reconstructing inter-bank settlements. The technology is running out, but things can't go forward — only HSBC is willing to join, and small and medium-sized banks have no power。

The reason for not moving is not technology, but lack of demand side motion. User education costs, scenario development costs, technical error costs - no one is willing to pay for these three things。

THE RECENT FOOTNOTE IS IN HONG KONG. IN MAY 2024, THE DIGITAL RENMINBI WAS OFFICIALLY CONNECTED TO HONG KONG’S “FPS” AND BECAME THE WORLD’S FIRST BILATERAL INTERCONNECTION OF THE “CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY + RAPID PAYMENT SYSTEM.” TWO YEARS LATER, IN MARCH 2026, THERE WERE AROUND 80,000 DMB WALLETS, 5,200 SUBSCRIBERS, 18 LOCAL BANKS PARTICIPATING IN THE FULL-VALUE -- AND THIS IS FAR FROM BEING A "SLIDING" FIGURE FOR A MARKET OF 7.5 MILLION PEOPLE。

People in Hong Kong are actually using it on a daily basis。

The question that goes back to section IV: Why is China's defaulting Hong Kong's stabilization list? It is China and Hong Kong that is the main agency for the landing of the renminbi in Hong Kong. In October 2025, China and China began to support the payment of the digital renminbi through more than 380 convenience stores and 1,200 vending machines, in cooperation with Circle K and FreshUp。

In other words, the strategic focus of China's capital has been on the digital renminbi line. It was absent from the stabilization list, not excluded, and it was doing another more direct thing。

The Hong Kong government sees it very clearly: e-HKD will never get out if it's on its own. So here comes the heat of the stable coin。

THE STABLE DOLLAR PROVIDES WHAT IT WILL NEVER MAKE: FREE DEMAND SIDE MOTION. HOT, MEDIA, KOL, VC, GLOBAL NARRATIVE, ALL FREE. THEN THE REST IS LOGICAL。

The first stage is to get licensed banks to use the narratives of the "business stabilization currency" to run users, run scenes, run technologies. HSBC has built the HSM machine room, made KYC/AML, educated the public to use HK dollars in the chain, convinced businesses to access it, and ran across the border with B2B scenes. These are all things e-HKD would have wanted to do but not to do。

The second stage: when user habits, clearing habits, technology stores are built, the Port of Hong Kong has introduced its own liquidation layer as the necessary route for inter-bank settlement, and the holding of a stable currency is included in this track; later, e-HKD was put on line as an original asset, and the holding of a stable currency gradually became an e-HKD "upholstered " 。

The brands, wallets and interfaces that users see remain the same, but the bottom-down clearing has been completed from commercial banks to central banks。

The path is almost 1:1 for the "two-tier operating" structure of the digital renminbi: direct front, central bank。

Same architecture, two paths. The difference is just — China pushes from the top down and Hong Kong from the bottom up。

The Hong Kong government wants to push e-HKD with a stable currency regulation instead of e-HKD with e-HKD itself。

VI. Sovereignty from global financial centres to Hong Kong currency clearing

Hong Kong ' s current core assets are devalued。

The status of Hong Kong ' s international financial centre over the past decades is essentially based on one thing: access to the United States dollar clearing system. Equity financing, inter-business lending, trade settlements, private banks all have this as their foundation。

But today this asset is loose on three fronts – the politicization of the dollar system itself makes access rights uncertain, the lack of a smooth flow of medium-size shares leaves one-tier markets weak, and geo-conflicts increases the costs of traditional agency access。

The competition of the next generation of international financial centres is no longer greater than that of the stock market and who has more private capital, but rather that of the next generation's financial infrastructure and liquidation sovereignty。

The U.S. is using GENIUS Act to add the stable currency to the United States dollar clearing system, making USDC a digital extension of the dollar. Europe is using MiCA to turn EMT into a digital version of euro liquidation. China is re-constructing the cross-border renminbi with a digital renminbi。

THE SAME THING IS BEING DONE IN THE THREE MAIN CURRENCY ZONES: TAKE THE SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO LIQUIDATE THE LOCAL CURRENCY OUT OF THE SWIFT-ERA AGENCY STRUCTURE AND PUT IT IN ITS OWN CBDC OR STABILIZATION CURRENCY STRUCTURE。

IN HONG KONG, THERE IS NO CURRENCY SOVEREIGNTY — THE RIGHT TO ISSUE HONG KONG CURRENCY IS DEPENDENT ON THE UNITED STATES DOLLAR UNDER THE ASSOCIATED EXCHANGE RATE SYSTEM. BUT WHAT HONG KONG CAN COMPETE FOR IS THE SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO LIQUIDATE: TO LEAVE HONG KONG DOLLAR LIQUIDATION NO LONGER ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON TRADITIONAL SWIFT AND CORRESPONDENT BANKS, BUT RATHER ON A NEXT-GENERATION INFRASTRUCTURE CONTROLLED BY HKMA。

From this point of view, it's all over again:

• "Commercial Stability Currency" narrative is never an end, it is a tool
• The purpose of HSBC is to complete user education and run the scene for the Hong Kong capital
• (a) The absence of China ' s capital Hong Kong is not an omission; it is to keep the strategic intent low
• VAOTC MAY NEVER REALLY LAND BECAUSE THE HISTORIC MISSION OF COIN-MAKING HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED。

This is a controlled narrative downgrading — allowing surface Web3 heat to be consumed and the bottom liquidation sovereignty to be built up。

it's like you said, justice is the point。

The point is who designed this "failure" and who really took something from it。

VII. At the end

Do we have Web3 in Hong Kong? Think about the years we've been arguing, it seems. But from a historical perspective, perhaps never。

What needs to be considered is what remains when Web3 is distilled

In fact, Hong Kong never needed Web3 — what Hong Kong needs is tickets to the next generation of financial centres。

And this ticket, the first stable currency holders are paying。

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