Hong Kong opens 24/7 secondary trading in two tokenised money market funds, a first under the SFC's pilot

Investors can now buy and sell two tokenised money market funds around the clock on a licensed virtual asset trading platform (VATP). The Securities and Futures Commission said on Monday 26 October that it had approved “the world’s first secondary trading of tokenised public funds” on an SFC-licensed VATP. Trading began the same day.

The two funds are the ChinaAMC HKD Digital Money Market Fund and the ChinaAMC USD Digital Money Market Fund, both SFC-authorised. The platform is PantherTrade, operated by Panthertrade (Hong Kong) Limited, according to the manager’s notice to shareholders published on HKEXnews on 23 October.

How the trading works

Primary dealing, subscribing and redeeming with the fund, continues as before. In addition, the tokenised Class F HKD and Class F USD shares are now labelled “(Primary and Secondary)” and can trade on PantherTrade directly or through a “Connecting Broker”.

The manager’s notice sets out the market model:

• Prices are not NAV. Trades happen “based on market prices agreed by the buyer and seller”, which may be facilitated by “Token Market Makers”, rather than at the net asset value per share.
• Indicative NAV. The manager, the platform and Connecting Brokers will publish a near real-time indicative NAV (iNAV), “updated generally at least every 15 seconds”.
• Market making. The manager will use its “best endeavours” to have at least one Token Market Maker quoting bids and offers. The notice says there is “no guarantee or assurance as to the price at which a market will be made”.
• Pre-funding. The platform will only execute a trade if the investor has enough fiat currency or tokenised shares in their account to cover it.
• Volatility control. PantherTrade has a trading band “based on the last auto-matched traded price established five minutes prior to the execution of the pending order, with cooling-off periods”.
• Settlement. Settlement between accounts on the platform “shall take place shortly upon any trade, generally within 1 hour”. Trades through Connecting Brokers may take longer.
• Ownership. The platform stays the direct shareholder in the fund’s off-chain register. Secondary trades are recorded as transfers on the platform’s own ledger.

The manager can suspend secondary trading if the iNAV “cannot be reliably calculated”, or if it decides that circumstances would materially affect fair pricing or disrupt market making. The notice also lists planned upgrades and maintenance, technical malfunctions and suspected market manipulation as examples of reasons the platform could suspend trading.

The funds also have listed share classes on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. The notice says the listed and tokenised classes “are not inter-exchangeable”, and that they trade “on separate and distinct secondary markets”. Conversion between them is not available, though investors can convert a primary-only tokenised class into the tradeable one in the same currency.

The regulator’s framework

The SFC said the approval builds on its existing regimes for exchange-traded funds and VATPs. It introduced a framework in April 2026 to pilot secondary trading of tokenised SFC-authorised funds on licensed VATPs. Its circular of 20 April 2026 set requirements covering “the operation of the trading channel, fair pricing, liquidity provision and disclosure”.

The SFC linked the launch to Project Ensemble, its tokenisation work with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. It said the interaction between tokenised funds and “tokenised money on digital rails” could support more efficient trade settlement, letting investors sell on an “around-the-clock basis” and move the proceeds instantly.

“It puts the SFC’s regulatory framework through its paces and adds an important building block – 24/7 trading capability – to Hong Kong’s evolving tokenisation ecosystem,” said Elisa Ng, the SFC’s Executive Director of Investment Products.

The first batch is limited to money market funds. The SFC said it would monitor trading and “consider broadening the product scope over time”.

The platform

Panthertrade (Hong Kong) Limited describes itself as an SFC-licensed VATP “established and wholly owned by Futu Holdings Limited (Nasdaq: FUTU)”, and as Hong Kong’s “first fully-licensed, brokerage-incubated VATP”. The manager’s notice says the tokenised shares “may be made available for secondary trading in the future on other SFC-licensed virtual asset trading platforms”.

This article reports the contents of regulatory and issuer announcements. It is not investment advice or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any fund or security.

The move adds to a run of always-on trading experiments in other markets, from Deutsche Börse’s 24/7 DAX 40 trading on 360X to planned weekend US equity trading on Bruce ATS. Hong Kong’s own cash equity market is working towards T+1 in the second half of 2028.

What we are watching

• How tight the market makers’ spreads are against the iNAV, especially outside Asian hours, and how much volume trades.
• Whether more VATPs or Connecting Brokers are added, and when the SFC widens the scope beyond money market funds.
• Whether tokenised deposits under Project Ensemble are used for settlement.