Brokerages are entering Hong Kong's crypto space; Futu is transitioning from "borrowing a boat to cross the sea" to "building its own boat to sail the sea."

Author: Jae, PANews

In March, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai was bustling with people. The warm, humid sea breeze from Victoria Harbour seeped into the exhibition halls as the annual Futu Investment Expo kicked off amidst the hustle and bustle. According to Futu statistics, the number of visitors exceeded 12,000, fully demonstrating Futu's appeal and the investment enthusiasm of the attendees.

In the past, when people talked about investing, the first things that came to mind were usually financial products like Futu's IPO, Hong Kong and US stock trading, and ETFs. However, in an exhibition area that was usually crowded with traditional assets, the Crypto booth, which was set up for the first time this year, became one of the focal points of the entire event.

The main venue was packed. Bitmine Chairman and renowned Wall Street analyst Tom Lee made a prediction to the nearly one thousand audience members: AI Agents will become the next billion-user group in the blockchain industry.

Meanwhile, at the same time as this exhibition, news that could reshape the landscape of virtual asset trading in Hong Kong was brewing.

A license is like a ticket to a ship, transforming the journey from "borrowing a boat to go to sea" to "building a ship to go to sea."

Throughout financial history, compliance standards have often determined the height of one's financial ceiling.

In 2024, starting with the SFC's opening up of virtual asset trading services for licensed institutions to retail investors, this sector, which had previously been on the fringes of regulation, officially entered the "deep waters of compliance."

The high barrier to entry can be seen from the number of licensed organizations.

In July 2024, Futu completed the upgrade of its Type 1 license. Building upon its existing securities and fund trading services, it obtained the qualification to provide virtual asset trading to eligible investors.

In January 2025, Futu officially obtained the VATP license, becoming a representative brokerage firm among the nine licensed institutions in Hong Kong at the same time, possessing both internet DNA and a base of tens of millions of retail users.

Futu has now crossed the third hurdle.

On March 26, Futu Group announced that its Hong Kong-based online brokerage, Futu Securities, will fully integrate with PantherTrade, a licensed and self-built virtual asset trading platform (VATP), to create Asia's first self-built Web2 + Web3 ecosystem closed loop.

Zeng Yuchao, Managing Director of Futu Group, stated: "Futu is committed to building a comprehensive financial ecosystem. With the deep integration of its self-built compliant virtual asset exchange, combined with its leading advantages in the brokerage platform and the continuous deepening of its product services, Futu is accelerating its transformation into a key bridge connecting traditional finance and virtual assets."

Clearly, this exchange, built by Hong Kong's leading retail brokerage firm, is dismantling the high wall that has bound traditional finance and virtual assets for years in order to achieve a strategic leap from "channel provider" to "infrastructure provider".

From then on, Futu became one of the few licensed institutions, following OSL and HashKey, to possess its own virtual asset trading infrastructure.

For a long time, Hong Kong's compliant virtual asset trading market has been dominated by native platforms such as OSL and Hashkey. They hold licenses and upstream infrastructure, and control the power of custody and matching.

Most brokerages wanting to enter the market can only provide trading services to users by connecting with upstream platforms. While this "outsourcing" model is lightweight, it has inherent limitations: the ability to list new cryptocurrencies is subject to external control, and business flexibility is restricted.

The significance of the VATP license is to take back control of the business.

For retail users, Futu will have more autonomy and initiative in choosing new currencies, and can expand rapidly under the compliant supervision of the SFC.

For professional investors and institutions, Futu will not only support a wider range of currencies, but also, under the guidance of the new SFC policy, provide qualified investors with securities financing and virtual asset trading. Furthermore, leveraging its high-quality wealth management system, Futu will provide high-net-worth clients with OTC block trading and even customized services related to ETF issuance for fund managers.

The compliance license grants Futu autonomy and independence, but the cost is equally clear: higher operating costs and greater regulatory pressure.

AI trading achieves "equal access," removing the barriers to quantitative trading.

If compliance infrastructure is the foundation for Futu to unlock its business potential, then AI is the accelerator.

At this exhibition, Futu highlighted a comprehensive upgrade to its AI trading service. Targeting the characteristics of virtual asset trading, Futu has evolved "NiuNiu AI" from a "problem-solving assistant" into an intelligent engine covering the entire investment cycle.

The logic is quite straightforward: global market information is complex, prices fluctuate wildly, and manual monitoring is extremely difficult. Automated trading is already standard practice for institutions, but for ordinary investors, coding ability, strategy development ability, and system security capabilities are insurmountable barriers.

Futu's solution is to use AI to lower the barrier to automated trading to the minimum.

In December 2025, Futu officially launched AI Algorithm Trading, allowing users to have the system automatically execute trades under pre-defined strategy conditions and risk control rules; in 2026, Futu will also launch the AI-generated indicator function.

More noteworthy is that Futu also released a new version of its OpenAPI and exclusive skills for AI agents.

A common security vulnerability exists in the industry: when an AI agent connects to a trading system, trading passwords may be directly exposed to the AI. Futu's new OpenAPI will address this core pain point from an operational mechanism perspective, providing a financial-grade secure infrastructure for AI-driven automated trading.

AI Agent Skills is an added-value intelligent tool provided by Futu that empowers users to obtain market data through natural language, enabling them to analyze, execute, and backtest strategy performance with zero barriers, and formulate timely strategies in a volatile market.

According to Yao Wenqing, head of Futu's AI Growth Center, looking to the future, any AI Agent can be seamlessly integrated through Futu's OpenAPI to automate the trading process. Users will not need to write a single line of code; they can complete the entire closed loop from environment deployment and strategy creation to backtesting and optimization, and even live trading, simply through natural language dialogue.

For "cross-border" users who trade Hong Kong and US stocks and invest in cryptocurrencies, AI is no longer an added bonus, but a necessary tool to combat volatility and overcome human greed.

Futu understands that in the face of high-frequency fluctuations in the crypto market, only continuous evolution of tools can lead to deep user stickiness to the platform.

This coincides with Tom Lee's prediction in his speech. He pointed out that the integration of AI agents and blockchain will be an important growth engine for the future crypto market: when AI agents step out of closed environments and enter real markets to perform tasks, blockchain is needed to manage identities, complete payment settlements, and achieve neutral coordination.

Futu's strategy has perfectly timed this trend.

Of course, technological challenges also exist. The performance of AI trading strategies under extreme market conditions still lacks sufficient validation, and the accuracy of natural language instructions and the unexplainability of AI decisions remain common difficulties in the industry.

Equity and Currency Integration: Allocate Traditional and Digital Assets in One Account

Today, Futu's biggest advantage over all native virtual asset exchanges is its "stock-currency integration" one-stop cross-asset allocation capability.

In traditional investment scenarios, if a user wants to allocate Hong Kong and US stocks and virtual assets at the same time, they need to switch back and forth between brokerage firms and virtual asset exchanges. Currency exchange, transfer, and fund allocation usually take several days, which is not only inefficient but also carries risks to compliance and fund security.

Even leading native platforms can only operate within the closed loop of virtual assets, unable to reach the vast user base and capital pool of the traditional securities market.

What Futu does is put these two separate markets into a single account.

Within Futu NiuNiu's system, users can complete one-stop trading of traditional financial assets such as Hong Kong and US stocks and funds, as well as virtual assets, through the same account. It also features 24/7 bank-securities transfers in Hong Kong dollars and US dollars, with funds arriving in as little as 4 seconds. Funds can be seamlessly transferred between stock accounts and virtual asset accounts.

This is precisely the advantage that native virtual asset exchanges cannot replicate.

Data shows that Futu has consistently ranked first among Hong Kong retail brokerages in terms of trading volume. As of the end of 2025, Futu NiuNiu App also ranked first in downloads among its peers in Hong Kong.

This means that Futu has access to a large group of traditional financial investors, and its brand trust and user base are unmatched by crypto-native platforms.

For users who are already accustomed to trading stocks on Futu, allocating virtual assets within the same platform is almost a natural choice.

Futu's entry will connect Hong Kong's largest pool of retail investors with compliant virtual asset trading, which may change the traffic landscape of the entire sector.

It is worth considering that crypto investors and traditional investors differ significantly in risk appetite, trading habits, and cognitive levels. Balancing the needs of these two user groups and preventing "stock-crypto integration" from becoming merely a concept requires further observation of the actual product design and user conversion capabilities.

“We believe that investors who choose Futu are people who take wealth seriously, and Futu’s mission is to continuously upgrade AI-driven tools and services to accompany every investor throughout their wealth journey.” This statement by Xie Zhijian, Managing Director of Futu Securities, at the exhibition, reveals Futu’s end-game thinking to some extent.

Compliance licenses have dismantled the wall between traditional finance and virtual assets; AI tools have dismantled the wall between institutions and retail investors; and the integration of stocks and currencies has dismantled the wall between different asset classes.

Futu has secured its ticket to the next cycle. With Futu Securities' integration with Cheetah Exchange, Futu's new journey is quietly beginning. As for the future, only time will tell.