Hong-Kong registered bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Gatecoin said today that following the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission’s (SFC) statement on Initial Coin Offerings back in September, the Gatecoin team has been working with legal advisors to determine the impact of the statement on its business.
The company affirmed they are currently awaiting the results of a regulatory compliance review by their legal advisors on the status of specific tokens that are listed on its exchange.
The review will determine whether a token that is currently listed fits the category of a security under the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Ordinance, and if so whether the token founders have taken steps to structure their token in accordance with the SFC’s framework.
Tokens deemed likely to be categorized as securities will be delisted from Gatecoin.
Gatecoin declared that once it has confirmed which of these tokens are to be delisted, clients will have one week to trade their tokens for bitcoin (BTC) or ether (ETH). After this period, both trading and deposits of such tokens will no longer be available through the exchange.
Yet, Gatecoin noted that users will still be able to immediately store any delisted tokens that maintain balances within company hosted wallets. Clients continuing to hold balances in these delisted tokens will then be provided a one-month period to withdraw these funds from their Gatecoin accounts.
Gatecoin plans to send multiple updates to clients with balances in those delisted tokens to ensure that they are adequately informed of the inability to trade following the delisting.
Even though Hong Kong is an autonomous territory of Mainland China with separate political and economic systems, the policy of China’s current ICO ban may soon take some shape within the Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.
