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A Hong Kong dollar stablecoin just completed a full dress rehearsal on Ethereum. Anchorpoint Financial Limited, working alongside OSL Group and Futu Holdings’ PantherTrade platform, successfully ran test transfers of the HKDAP token on Ethereum Mainnet on May 13.
The test covered every stage of the stablecoin’s lifecycle: fiat HKD funding through Standard Chartered’s banking channels, minting, on-chain transfers, and total redemption. By the end of the exercise, zero tokens remained in circulation.
What HKDAP actually is
HKDAP stands for “HKD At Par,” which tells you exactly what it’s designed to do. Each token is meant to maintain a 1:1 peg with the Hong Kong dollar, backed by high-quality HKD-denominated reserve assets that meet guidelines set by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Anchorpoint Financial itself is a joint venture formed in February 2025. The partners behind it are Standard Chartered, Hong Kong telecom giant HKT, and Animoca Brands, the Web3 conglomerate known for backing The Sandbox and other blockchain gaming ventures.
The company was among the first to receive a stablecoin issuer license from the HKMA, granted in April 2026. That license sits under Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Ordinance, which came into effect in August 2025 and created a formal legal framework for fiat-backed token issuance in the territory.
Why the full lifecycle matters
The exercise didn’t just prove that tokens could move between wallets. It demonstrated the entire pipeline: a licensed bank accepting fiat deposits, those deposits triggering the creation of stablecoins on a public blockchain, those tokens transferring between parties on a regulated trading platform, and then the complete unwinding of that process through redemption.
The involvement of PantherTrade, a licensed trading platform operated by Futu Holdings, adds another layer. Futu is a publicly listed fintech company with a substantial retail brokerage business across Asia.
CEO Dominic Maffei described the tests as “an important first step toward realizing Hong Kong’s digital asset vision.” The planned phased launch of HKDAP is targeted for the second quarter of 2026.
Hong Kong’s stablecoin ambitions in context
Hong Kong has been positioning itself as the regulated crypto capital of Asia. The Stablecoins Ordinance that took effect in August 2025 was a key part of that strategy, creating one of the first comprehensive legal frameworks for fiat-backed stablecoin issuance in the region. The HKMA’s approach requires issuers to maintain full reserves in high-quality assets and submit to regulatory oversight.
For Hong Kong specifically, a functioning HKD stablecoin could serve as critical infrastructure for tokenized real-world asset settlement and cross-border payments.
What this means for investors
HKDAP is designed to maintain a steady 1:1 peg with the Hong Kong dollar. A regulated HKD stablecoin with banking-grade infrastructure creates new on-ramps and off-ramps for capital flowing into digital asset markets across Asia, with more efficient settlement rails for trading tokenized securities, real estate, and other real-world assets.
Standard Chartered is providing the banking channels that make the stablecoin’s reserve management possible. HKDAP needs tokenized asset markets and cross-border payment corridors to actually materialize at scale. Investors tracking this space should pay attention to what happens between now and the planned launch, particularly any announcements about institutional partnerships or specific asset tokenization projects that would use HKDAP as a settlement token.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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