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Hong Kong lawmaker Johnny Ng says harsh COVID travel rules, not China\u2019s 2021 crypto ban, pushed firms out as Hong Kong and Singapore now compete head\u2011to\u2011head as crypto hubs.<\/p>\n
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Hong Kong Legislative Council member Dr. Johnny Ng Kit-chong (@Johnny_nkc) said at Consensus HK on March 24 that it was the city\u2019s strict\u00a0COVID-era policies\u00a0\u2014 not Beijing\u2019s 2021 ban on crypto trading and mining \u2014 that drove companies out of Hong Kong, pushing back against a widely held narrative that has shaped the industry\u2019s perception of the city for years.<\/a>\u200b<\/p>\n Speaking in a video interview hosted by @_dsencil for Bitcoin.com News at Consensus HK, Ng argued that the real culprit was Hong Kong\u2019s prolonged zero-COVID regime, which imposed mandatory 14-day hotel quarantines for international arrivals, flight bans from major western countries including the US and UK, and effectively cut the city off from the global business community between 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The data backs up the argument. According to the Hong Kong American Chamber of Commerce\u2019s 2022 Business Sentiment Survey, more than 50% of respondents considered leaving Hong Kong due to COVID-related travel restrictions and quarantine requirements. Business executives cited those restrictions \u2014 not political or regulatory risk \u2014 as the primary factor making Hong Kong uncompetitive. Senior figures departed from JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Mandarin Oriental, while corporations including V.F. Corporation relocated their operations entirely.<\/a>\u200b<\/p>\n For crypto firms specifically, the inability to freely move founders, executives, and developers in and out of a city that prides itself on being a global connector was more disruptive than any regulatory directive from Beijing. Companies including FTX, which was headquartered in Hong Kong before moving to the Bahamas ahead of its November 2022 collapse, made their exits during the height of the restrictions period \u2014 not in direct response to China\u2019s ban.<\/p>\n Ng also addressed what he called a genuine competitive dynamic now emerging between Hong Kong and Singapore for the title of Asia\u2019s leading\u00a0crypto jurisdiction. By 2026, Hong Kong has fully opened retail crypto trading, licensed ten virtual asset trading platforms through the Securities and Futures Commission, and established a legislative subcommittee on Web3 \u2014 which Ng himself chairs.\u200b<\/p>\n Singapore, meanwhile, has delayed implementation of Basel Committee crypto banking rules to 2027, giving banks more adjustment time, while continuing to attract institutional capital through the Monetary Authority of Singapore\u2019s tokenized finance initiatives. Analysts who previously saw Singapore pulling ahead following its regulatory crackdown on unlicensed firms now describe the two cities as operating in genuine parity \u2014 each with distinct strengths, and both drawing firms\u00a0rotating away\u00a0from Dubai as geopolitical risk in the Gulf rises.<\/p>\n Ng\u2019s intervention at Consensus HK is itself significant. CoinDesk named him one of the Top 50 Most Influential People in Cryptocurrency in 2024, and he has been one of the most vocal government-affiliated advocates for Web3 adoption in Hong Kong since 2021. His argument \u2014 that COVID policy rather than political repression was the decisive variable \u2014 is a deliberate reframing aimed at reassuring firms that the structural conditions that made Hong Kong attractive in the first place remain intact, now that the pandemic restrictions are gone.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hong Kong lawmaker Johnny Ng says harsh COVID travel rules, not China\u2019s 2021 crypto ban, pushed firms out as Hong Kong and Singapore now compete head\u2011to\u2011head as crypto hubs. Summary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24354,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24353\/revisions\/24354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Human Cost of Zero-COVID<\/h2>\n
Hong Kong vs. Singapore: A New Rivalry<\/h2>\n
A Lawmaker Rebuilding the Narrative<\/h2>\n