HK game firm to buy $100M crypto for treasury, China/UAE CBDC deal: Asia Express
Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
Hong Kong gaming firm to invest $100M in crypto
Boyaa Interactive International, a publicly-traded Hong Kong holding company specializing in online card and board games, wants to secure the approval of its shareholders to invest $100 million in crypto.
According to this week’s announcement, Boyaa Interactive directors want to allocate $45 million of corporate funds to Bitcoin (BTC), $45 million to Ethereum (ETH), and $10 million to stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). As for rationales for the investment, directors wrote:
“The Internet gaming business mainly operated by the Group has a high degree of logical fit with Web3 technology. It attaches great importance to communities and users, covers virtual asset attributes and other characteristics, making Web3 technology easier and more widely used in the Internet gaming industry.”
The company’s brand of 75 online games, such as its Texas Hold’em casino, has around 1.18 million daily active players. In Q3 2023, Boyaa Interactive generated $14 million in revenue and $4.2 million in earnings, respectively.
China signs $400M CBDC deal with United Arab Emirates
The People’s Bank of China — the country’s central bank — has signed a $400 million cooperation memorandum on central bank digital currencies with the United Arab Emirates.
The China Council For The Promotion of International Trade said the memorandum was signed in Hong Kong and will last for five years, allowing for the interchange of each other’s CBDC during bilateral trade.
“The renewal of the currency swap agreement reflects the depth of relations between the UAE and China and demonstrates the UAE Central Bank’s commitment to strengthening its partnership with China in the fields of finance, trade, and investment. China is the UAE’s largest global trading partner, with non-oil trade between the two countries exceeding Dh264.2 billion in 2022.”
Government officials say that the treaty “will facilitate the provision of liquidity to financial markets in local currencies to settle cross-border financial and trade transactions in a “more effective and efficient manner.”
Since its inception in 2020, digital yuan (e-CNY) transactions have surpassed 1.8 trillion yuan ($253.6 billion), while the number of wallets has surged to 120 million. Recently, four foreign banks, including Standard Chartered, HSBC, Hang Seng Bank, and Fubon Bank have joined China’s e-CNY pilot tests.
Hong Kong director Stephen Chow teases NFT drop
Award-winning Hong Kong director Stephen Chow, known for his magnum opus 2004 film Kung Fu Hustle, will soon launch his own nonfungible tokens (NFT) collection.
In a December 6 Instagram post, Chow stated that the NFT project, dubbed “Nobody,” will be designed in collaboration with Chinese-American rapped Jin Au-Yeung, who also goes by his stage name MC Jin.
“We often look up to great people simply because they never underestimate themselves. Ordinary individuals, on the other hand, often bring the greatest surprises to the world,” wrote Chow in describing the theme of the Nobody NFT collection.
The NFTs will be released on the Moonbox platform, a Hong Kong-based AI and Web3 startup that aims to launch AI-powered NFTs focusing on the arts and film industry. Chow will serve as the first content creator on the platform. In August, Moonbox closed a $2.5 million funding round at a $50 million valuation led by OKX Ventures.
Singapore joins China’s e-CNY pilot program
Singapore will soon accept the e-CNY as a means of payment by Chinese visitors to the country.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in collaboration with the People’s Bank of China and the Digital Currency Institute, will embark on a pilot enabling travelers from both countries to use e-CNY for tourism spending in Singapore and China. “This will enhance convenience for travelers when making purchases during their overseas travel,” government officials wrote.
In 2020, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation related to digital finance. At the Singapore Fintech Festival last month, the MAS revealed that it will draft a blueprint for the development of a digital Singaporean dollar.
Read also
Victory Securities approved for new Bitcoin fund in Hong Kong
Victory Securities, the first broker to receive a virtual asset provider license (VASP) in Hong Kong, has received regulatory approval from the country’s Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) for a new Bitcoin fund in partnership with EMC Labs.
The Victory EMC BTC Cycle Fund will allow investor subscriptions in U.S. dollars as well as stablecoins such as USDT and USDC.
On November 27, Victory Securities received a VASP license along with Interactive Brokers. The license allows firms to offer crypto services to retail investors, but only for trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and certain stablecoins. In addition, its new Bitcoin fund will only be available to accredited investors meeting a $1 million portfolio requirement for the time being.
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The two men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in February and later received a letter directing them to “self-deport” from the United States.
After a New York jury found the Tornado Cash co-founder guilty of one of three charges he had been facing, US authorities still have the option of filing for a retrial.
As a milestone is reached of 50,000 migrants crossing the Channel since he became prime minister, Keir Starmer finds himself in a familiar place – seemingly unable to either stop the boats, or escape talking about them.
Home Office data shows 50,271 people made the journey since the election last July, after 474 migrants arrived on Monday. This is around 13,000 higher than the comparable period the previous year.
Politics Live: Starmer hits unwanted small boat crossings milestone
Starmer has tweeted more than 10 times about this issue in the past week alone, more than any other.
On Monday he wrote on X: “If you come to this country illegally, you will face detention and return. If you come to this country and commit a crime, we will deport you as soon as possible.”
It could be a tweet by a politician of any party on the right – and many voters (and Labour MPs) will say it’s right that the prime minister is taking this issue seriously.
Illegal – or irregular – migration is a relatively small proportion of total migration. Net migration was down at 431,000 in 2024 which the OCED say is comparable to other high-income countries. But it is of course highly visible and politically charged.
Nigel Farage’s Reform party have had a busy few months campaigning on it, and the prime minister has been toughening up his language in response.
Shortly after the local elections in May in which Reform won hundreds of seats and took control of councils, Starmer made his speech in which he warned: “In a diverse nation like ours, without fair immigration rules, we risk becoming an island of strangers.”
It outraged some in his own party, and he later said he regretted that language.
But it was part of a speech which made clear that he wanted action – vowing to end “years of uncontrolled migration” in a way “that will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics.”
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to the Border Force compound in Dover, Kent. Pic: PA
It’s a long way from his early months as Labour leader in 2020 when he said: “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them.” Migration did not feature as one of his five missions for “change” at the general election.
The strategy by Starmer and his minister is to talk up forthcoming new measures – a crackdown on social media adverts by traffickers, returns of people without a right to be in the UK which are indeed higher than under the Conservatives, and last week, a “one in, one out” deal with France to send people back across the channel.
The government say some people have been detained, although it is not known when these returns will happen. Ministers are also still pointing the finger at the previous Conservative government – which found stopping the boats easy to say and hard to achieve.
Read More:
Kemi Badenoch suggests asylum seekers should be housed in ‘Nightingale’ camps
What is the UK-France migrant returns deal, who will be returned and how many?
Baroness Jacqui Smith, a former home secretary, said this morning: “I don’t think it was our fault that it was enabled to take root. We’ve taken our responsibility to work internationally, to change the law, to improve the way in which the asylum system works, to take through legislation to strengthen the powers that are available.
“The last government did none of those things and focused on gimmicks. And it’s because of that, that the crime behind this got embedded in the way which it did. And that won’t be solved overnight.”
But for a prime minister who appears to have come to this issue reluctantly, talking about it a lot – and suggesting he’ll be judged on whether he can tackle it – risks raising expectations.
Joe Twyman, of the pollsters Deltapoll said: “You cannot simply out-Farage Nigel Farage when it comes to the subject of immigration. In a sense, Labour is falling into precisely the same trap that the Conservatives fell into. They’re giving significant prominence to a subject where they don’t have much control”.
Starmer has avoided mentioning firm numbers on how many migrants his crackdown may stop, but as previous prime ministers have found with the difficult issue of controlling migration, if you ask to be judged on delivery, voters will do so.
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