Chinese fund managers seek to ride bitcoin bull
As the price of bitcoin soars, Chinese cryptocurrency asset managers are looking to expand in places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, skirting an intensified crackdown at home. Cryptocurrency-focused hedge funds have grown assets under management and registered hefty gains this year thanks to bitcoin’s recent surge to over $18,000, close to its 2017 high.
At the same time, Beijing has been tightening already strict scrutiny over cryptocurrencies as the People’s Bank of China ( PBOC) prepares to launch its own digital currency, partly a response esponse to the threat from currencies encies like bitcoin, officials say.
Beijing banned virtual currency trading in 2017, stopping a free-wheeling ling emerging crypto pto industry, and causing ng China’s share of global bal bitcoin trading to slump mp to less than 4 percent, nt, from nearly 17 percent ent in 2017, according to CoinShare, Europe’s biggest ggest digital asset manager.
Consequently, businessmen in China are looking elsewhere to raise crypto-focused funds, following the path of some of the world’s largest crypto trading platforms which were founded in China but moved overseas in 2017. This month, Babel Finance, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency financial services provider founded by Chinese entrepreneur Flex Yang, applied for an asset management license in the city, Yang said.
A license in the Asian financial hub would help Babel become a “gateway” between traditional financial institutions and crypto investing, said Yang, who dreams
of creating “the JPMorgan in the field of cryptoc cryptocurrency.”
If Babel re receives a license, Yang hopes t to raise $1 billion, dwarfing existing funds in the cit city licensed under special r rules for cryptofocused ass asset managers. Gordon Che Chen, a former bitcoin trader in B Beijing co-founded cryptocurr cryptocurrency asset manager G GMR in Singapore last year, b betting on growing demand fro from high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors.
Chen, who currently manages over $20 million of bitcoin assets, said he chose Singapore because of its regulatory structure. “Whether it’s in the US, or Singapore, digital currency business is being increasingly regulated.” Singapore-based Onchain Custodian, which counts Chinese conglomerate Fosun as an investor is expanding too — even in China.
The company, which safeguards digital assets for institutional clients, plans to open an office in China to initially provide consultancy services in blockchain technology
However, activities onshore are still limited by regulation. In October, the PBOC outlawed private issuance of digital currencies, and Malta-headquartered exchange OKEX was forced to suspend cryptocurrency withdrawals for a month because an executive was assisting Chinese law enforcement with their enquiries.
GMR’s Chen lamented that China has lost its global pricing power, as well as its role as a key hub for bitcoin trading and mining: “China’s first-mover advantage has vanished.”