One in four Hong Kong adults plans to hold virtual assets in the future, up 6 percentage points from an earlier survey conducted after a September 2023 crypto platform fraud scandal, indicating that the incident’s negative impact has faded, researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology say.
The latest survey, conducted in November 2024, polled 5,863 Hong Kong adults over three weeks. The previous two surveys were carried out the year before, in April-May and September-October of 2023, before and shortly after the fraud incident.
Interest in holding virtual assets among Hongkongers has rebounded to levels seen before the crypto scandal, according to the HKUST research team behind the survey.
Across all three surveys, at least 40 percent of the respondents indicated uncertainty in holding virtual assets in the future.
The most recent one found that Hongkongers are significantly more willing to use crypto exchanges if they are regulated, with 20 percent more respondents saying they would feel safe depositing money into regulated platforms than unregulated ones.
Bitcoin remains the most popular virtual asset, with 81 percent of respondents expressing interest in holding it – up 7 percentage points from the first survey.
Investor interest in non-fungible tokens has waned, dropping 11 percentage points since the first survey, as preferences shift away from speculative digital collectibles.
However, public awareness of tokenized money remains to be developed, as 72 percent of respondents said they were unfamiliar with Central Bank Digital Currency, followed by 65 percent for e-HKD, 61 percent for stablecoins, and 81 percent for tokenized deposits, the HKUST survey showed.
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