HashKey Launches Global Crypto Exchange, Targets Coinbase

HashKey Group, Hong Kong’s biggest licensed cryptocurrency exchange operator, has launched a global trading platform that it hopes will overtake US-based Coinbase in trading volume within five years.

The new exchange, HashKey Global, operates with a Digital Asset Business licence issued in Bermuda, similar to the Coinbase International exchange that the company launched after receiving a Bermuda licence in April 2023.

Like Coinbase International, HashKey Global is to be open to traders worldwide excluding, for regulatory reasons, markets such as the US, mainland China and Hong Kong.

HashKey said it believes it has a competitive advantage in the fact that it is compliant with the crypto regulatory regime introduced in Hong Kong last year, while also presenting a smooth user experience.

Regulatory ‘safety’

Hashkey Global managing director Ben El-Baz told Bloomberg Television that the company believes it combines the “user experience and product experience” of Binance – the world’s biggest exchange – and the “regulatory and safety back end” of Coinbase.

Speaking to the South China Morning Post, HashKey Group chief operating officer Livio Weng said the world’s biggest exchanges are either “easy to use but not compliant” or “compliant but hard to use”.

He said the company aims to have more trading volume than Coinbase across all HashKey Group platforms by 2029.

“We have seen their data and we don’t think that’ll be difficult,” he said.

Crypto optimism

Cryptocurrency values plummeted last year amidst multiple scandals, notably the collapse of major exchange FTX, but have recovered this year after the US introduced its first-ever spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

HashKey said in January it attained unicorn status after raising nearly $100 million (£79m) in a funding round that valued it at more than $1.2bn.