HashKey Accelerates Hong Kong IPO Push, Details Revealed in Prospectus

HashKey Nears Hong Kong IPO

HashKey Holdings Limited (HashKey) is making rapid strides toward becoming the first crypto firm listed in Hong Kong. On December 1st, the company passed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's main board listing hearing, with JPMorgan, Guotai Haitong, and Guotai Junan International serving as joint sponsors, marking a crucial step toward entering the capital markets.

The extensive 663-page hearing documents reveal comprehensive details about HashKey's business model, operational status, financial performance, and future strategies. The listing is expected to occur as early as January next year.

IPO Preparations

As more cryptocurrency exchanges prepared for IPOs, Bloomberg reported in October this year that HashKey had confidentially submitted an IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, aiming to raise up to US$500 million (approximately RMB 3.9 billion) and seeking to complete the listing this year. Currently, HashKey has announced that it has passed the listing hearing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is now in the listing preparation stage.

According to Hong Kong's IPO process, the company first submits a listing application (the filing), and then the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will inquire about and review the information. The hearing is a crucial stage, meaning that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has reviewed the information and compliance submitted by the company and granted "in-principle approval." Generally, it takes about 3 weeks to 1 month from the hearing to the formal listing to complete subsequent roadshows, pricing, and subscriptions. If all goes well, HashKey is expected to be officially listed in January 2026.

Offering Details and Use of Proceeds

According to the draft prospectus, the IPO will be conducted through a combination of international placement and Hong Kong public offering, but the issuance price range, the number of shares issued, and the proportion of public offering and placement are still under negotiation. The par value per share is US$0.00001, and the final issue price will be determined through consultation between the global coordinators (JPMorgan and Guotai Junan International) and the company, and is expected to be finalized before the end of 2025, and will not exceed the upper limit in the draft document. However, according to previous reports, the maximum fundraising target for this IPO is US$500 million (approximately HK$3.9 billion).

The document indicates that the funds raised are expected to be used for technology and infrastructure iteration, market expansion and ecosystem cooperation, operations and risk management, and working capital and general corporate uses.

Shareholder Structure

After the completion of the IPO, HashKey's major shareholders will include Lu Weiding, GDZ International (wholly owned by Lu Weiding), HashKey Fintech III, Pu Xing Energy, and XChainX, and other institutional shareholders include Hillhouse Venture Capital, Fidelity, Meitu, Shengshi Wealth, CDH Investments, People's Capital, OKG Venture, and so on.

Among them, in February of this year, a HashKey official announced a strategic financing of US$30 million, and Gaorong Venture participated in the investment with a valuation of more than US$1.5 billion. Looking at this, it is far lower than the valuations of other exchanges planned to be listed, such as Kraken with a valuation of US$20 billion, Upbit with US$10.3 billion, and Gemini with approximately US$3.3 billion, etc.

Institutional Focus and Trading Revenue

HashKey is a mature Asian integrated digital asset company with a comprehensive portfolio of licenses and registrations worldwide, covering Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Bermuda, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland and others, and has high compliance advantages.

According to the document, HashKey's main sources of revenue are transaction facilitation services, on-chain services, and asset management services.

Transaction facilitation services are HashKey's core business, accounting for 71.8%. Since its launch in 2022, this business has gradually turned from loss to profit, and achieved annual revenue of nearly HK$5.17 billion in 2024, becoming HashKey's largest source of revenue. In transaction facilitation, HashKey Exchange is one of the few exchanges that holds relevant licenses in each jurisdiction, and is also authorized to provide services to professional investors and retail investors. In terms of trading volume in 2024, HashKey is the largest regional onshore platform in Asia and the largest exchange in Hong Kong, with a market share of over 75%. As of the end of 2024, the platform's assets have increased to HK$11.4 billion, and exceeded HK$19.9 billion in the third quarter of 2025.

Institutions are the main force behind trading volume. As of June 30, 2025, the number of registered users of HashKey Exchange exceeded 1,446,926, an increase of 8.2% from the end of 2024, but only about 9.6% (138,517) of customers actually deposited fiat currency or digital assets. Its customers mainly consist of institutional clients (including banks, asset management companies, family offices, hedge funds, and Web3 developers), Omnibus clients (such as licensed securities companies), ecosystem partners, and retail users. Among them, institutions are the main force behind trading. The average monthly trading volume of about 273 institutional clients is HK$24.3 billion, which is about 4.7 times the trading volume of retail clients during the same period. Although the number of institutional clients is far less than that of retail clients, their trading volume is large, and the revenue contribution efficiency of institutional clients has been significantly improved, with the monetization rate increasing from 0.01% last year to 0.07%. In contrast, the average number of retail clients is 14,099 per month, with a trading volume of HK$51.46 billion, and the monetization rate is 0.19%.

From the perspective of the regional distribution of these users, they are mainly concentrated in the Hong Kong region. In the first half of 2025, the trading volume in the Hong Kong market reached HK$18.19 billion, which is more than ten times that of other institutions, but it is less than 60% of last year's volume. At the same time, the trading volume in Bermuda also plummeted during the same period, mainly due to the blockage of fiat currency deposit and withdrawal channels in the region.

Regarding on-chain services, HashKey Cloud provides exclusive services for institutional clients and is one of the first service providers in Hong Kong approved by the Securities and Futures Commission to support ETH ETF staking. As of September 30, 2025, the staked assets managed by HashKey Cloud reached HK$29 billion, making it the largest staking service provider in Asia and the eighth largest in the world. At the same time, as a compliant Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network, the total value of RWA on HashKey Chain reached HK$1.7 billion. As of June 30, 2025, on-chain service revenue reached HK$52.99 million, mainly from staking/node validation revenue of HK$27.46 million and Web3 activity revenue of HK$23.75 million, the latter coming from ticket sales and sponsorships for events such as Web3 Carnival.

Regarding asset management services, HashKey mainly provides digital asset investment opportunities for institutional clients. As of September 30, 2025, the company managed a total of HK$7.8 billion in assets and completed more than 400 investments (including infrastructure, tools, applications, and service providers, etc.), with the return on investment of the HashKey Blockchain Investment Fund exceeding 10 times, demonstrating its strong performance in institutional asset management. This business achieved revenue of over HK$280 million in the first two quarters of this year, which is lower than the HK$380 million in the same period last year.

Under multiple business lines, HashKey's overall revenue has also achieved rapid growth, with HK$129 million, HK$208 million, HK$721 million, and HK$284 million respectively in 2022, 2023, 2024, and even the second quarter of 2025. It is worth mentioning that the document revealed that HashKey's revenue was highly concentrated in a few clients. The top five clients contributed 79.6% of total revenue in 2022, with the single largest client accounting for more than half. But in recent years, the company's customer structure has gradually diversified, and the revenue proportion of the top five clients and the single largest client has decreased significantly.

Profitability Challenges and No Platform Coin Repurchase Plan

Despite this, HashKey has not yet achieved profitability. From 2022 to 2024 and even the first half of 2025, the company lost HK$585 million, HK$580 million, HK$1.19 billion, and HK$507 million respectively. The company explained that the losses, in addition to the market downturn, were mainly due to the large upfront investments in the early stages of business development, including improving regulation and licensing, building technological infrastructure, research and development and technological optimization, and brand building and market expansion. However, with the continuous growth in platform trading activities, client assets, and product utilization, many core expenses have remained relatively stable.

However, HashKey's financial condition is still relatively sufficient. As of August 31, 2025, the company had HK$1.657 billion in cash and cash equivalents, in addition to digital assets with a total value of HK$592 million, with mainstream currencies such as BTC and ETH accounting for 84%, providing a strong guarantee for future business development. With the current average cash consumption of about HK$40.9 million per month, it is expected to last for 40.5 months, but officials also said that future business expansion is expected to bring positive cash flows.

HashKey also revealed future growth strategies and product innovations in the document, focusing on building a one-stop digital asset ecosystem, including building a super app, expanding exchange products and services, launching crypto bank cards, launching enterprise-oriented Crypto-as-a-Service based on HashKey Chain, and exclusive asset management services, etc. In addition, the document also mentioned HashKey's platform coin HSK, which is a functional tool used to incentivize users, developers, and ecosystem partners, and the price is mainly affected by changes in overall market sentiment and investor expectations. According to the document, the operating costs and expenses of HSK were HK$9.9 million, HK$70.8 million, HK$176 million, HK$82.9 million, and HK$123 million respectively in 2022, 2023, 2024, and even June 30, 2025. It can be seen that the issuance cost of HSK has also become an important factor affecting profits. And the relatively low usage of HSK, with usage rates of 1.71% and 0.49% respectively as of December 31, 2024 and June 30, 2025. To increase practicality and liquidity, HashKey is also trying to expand HSK to daily financial scenarios, for example, the credit card launched in conjunction with a commercial bank will use HSK as a consumption reward. It should be noted that according to the promise in the white paper, HashKey will repurchase and destroy HSK with 20% of net profit in the market, but since the repurchase conditions have not been met during the period, no repurchases have been carried out.