Postscript to HashKey's IPO: Behind the glory, how should we balance the interests of "crypto" and "stock"?

On December 17, 2025, the bell rang at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking the listing of HashKey Group, Hong Kong's first licensed digital asset trading platform.

Crypto Salad has received many messages on its platform, hoping we can discuss what the Hong Kong listing of Web3 companies represents, and whether it signifies a bright future for Web3 companies in Hong Kong similar to Coinbase.

Before envisioning the future, we want to address a common misconception: going public is not the end of a successful journey. This is especially true for Web3 companies, where going public serves as a significant "watershed" moment. HashKey's future challenges will no longer be limited to explaining its compliance and recognition, but will encompass a much wider range of practical issues.

For example, regarding stock prices, the current economic and policy environment is not favorable. HashKey listed in this environment, initially holding above its IPO price, but quickly fell, closing at roughly the same price as, or even slightly lower than, the offering price. For the next few days, the stock price mostly fluctuated below the offering price, with occasional rebounds that didn't last long. Overall, the impression is that the market didn't rush to buy just because of its successful IPO; instead, it waited to see how the company actually performed before deciding whether to buy or whether it was worth the price.

Compared to Coinbase, the performance of Coinbase's stock largely depends on one thing: whether there are traders in the market. When the market is hot, trading volume increases, transaction fees rise, and revenue and profits are immediately reflected in the financial statements, naturally affecting the stock price. Therefore, the market tends to view Coinbase with a more "cyclical stock" or "trading platform stock" mindset.

However, HashKey is no longer a company solely reliant on transaction fees. Due to various well-known reasons, it's more like a comprehensive platform operating within a regulatory framework: trading, custody, asset management, compliance services, and institutional business. Its growth is slow, and the monetization path is long, making it unlikely to generate substantial profits immediately due to a single market trend. Therefore, Coinbase's valuation logic cannot be directly applied to HashKey.

However, some issues do not depend on how well a company is operated, but are determined by its inherent characteristics. For example, as a publicly listed Web3 company, HashKey not only has publicly traded shares, but also its own ecosystem token (HSK).

Although HashKey states in its prospectus that HSK is merely a gas token used to pay for computation and transaction fees on HashKey, and that the token's price fluctuations are legally and structurally separate from the listed company's stock price, how can a sustainable balance be achieved between these two market pricing mechanisms: "stock price" and "token price"? After all, these are two different financial market narratives, two different regulatory logics, and even vastly different investor expectations. Any company taking its token ecosystem to the public market cannot avoid this issue.

Today, we'd like to raise this question and share our perspectives.

In the context of traditional corporations, stock price is a relatively clear and comprehensive indicator: it compresses a company's revenue capacity, cost structure, risk exposure, governance quality, and macroeconomic expectations into a tradable price. The key here is not whether the market is rational, but rather that the securities market's basic requirements for information and responsibility are certain: listed companies need continuous disclosure, verifiable operating data, a relatively stable governance structure, and clear legal obligations to investors. Therefore, the requirement for listed companies is not that their business cannot fluctuate, but rather that information disclosure and risk boundaries must be sufficiently clear, allowing investors to make decisions within a comparable framework—that is, relatively predictable.

The price of a token is entirely different. Even without discussing whether a token has the characteristics of a security, from the perspective of market pricing mechanisms, the correlation between the price of a token and the "company" itself is not that high. The biggest influence on the price of a token is the impact of external variables, such as narrative, market expectations, liquidity structure, and most importantly—market sentiment.

Therefore, stock prices and currency prices are based on completely different pricing logics.

Now, HashKey's IPO has brought these two approaches together, and we can imagine some unavoidable contradictions: the securities market wants companies to make uncertainty transparent and controllable; the crypto market, on the other hand, is accustomed to turning uncertainty into narratives and volatility itself. Finding a balance has become a difficult problem that must be solved.

For HashKey, the most challenging aspect is often not business operations, but rather "continuous compliance." HashKey has employed various sophisticated methods to meet the compliance requirements for "virtual asset trading platforms" in various jurisdictions (see the article "Why Can HashKey Become the First Crypto Stock in Hong Kong?" on the Crypto Law WeChat official account). Now, as a listed company, HashKey faces compliance requirements under the Securities and Futures Ordinance and the Listing Rules.

Information disclosure is the core of listed companies' compliance. According to relevant regulations, listed companies must ensure the fairness, timeliness, and accuracy of their disclosures of material information. However, in Web3 business scenarios, the crypto market operates 24/7 with extremely rapid information dissemination, and the market has adapted to this speed. Does the addition of an ecosystem partner, the deployment of a node on a blockchain, or the update of a technical protocol constitute material information? Does it need to be disclosed, and how should it be disclosed? Secondly, if the listed company has not yet suspended trading or issued an announcement at the time of disclosure, will it face internal information leakage or be classified as engaging in market misconduct? Other key related questions include:

• First, is there a conflict of interest? Is it possible to sacrifice the interests of investors in another market in order to maintain the expectations of one market? For example, when deciding on profit distribution, should the company increase shareholder dividends to boost the stock price, or strengthen token buybacks to support the coin price?
• Second, is there a risk of being misunderstood as manipulating the market? Even without subjective intent, it could still have an undue impact. All HashKey employees hold HSK tokens. Given that employees have access to important, yet-to-be-disclosed information due to their positions, does this necessarily affect the market price of HSK?

These problems cannot actually be blamed on HashKey. After all, no Web3 company would design a governance mechanism with "conflict prevention" as its starting point. As an industry pioneer, HashKey must solve these subtle and complex problems.

So how can HashKey achieve a "balance" between cryptocurrencies and stocks?

Crypto Law believes that the goal is not for prices to rise or fall in tandem, but rather for both prices to establish trust within their respective rules.

When discussing the balance between cryptocurrencies and stocks, many people unconsciously fall into an intuition: the two should ideally promote each other and rise in tandem, or at least not drag each other down. However, from a legal and governance perspective, a truly sustainable balance is not about "uniform price movements," but rather "uniform rules": stock prices should be understood within the disclosure and governance framework of the securities market, and cryptocurrency prices should be understood within the transparency and ecosystem expectation framework of the crypto market. Companies must ensure they do not repeatedly oscillate between these two frameworks. In other words, companies do not need to promise what the cryptocurrency price or stock price will be; what they need to promise is a stable institutional arrangement for information disclosure and behavioral boundaries that can withstand short-term sentiment, liquidity shocks, and narrative fluctuations.

From this perspective, HashKey's IPO is significant for Web3 companies far beyond simply "entering the mainstream capital market." It signifies the forced maturation of a new corporate model: one that must retain the innovation speed and ecosystem organization of Web3 businesses while achieving an auditable, disclosable, and accountable governance structure within the framework of company law and securities law.

What the industry should really be observing is not the performance of stock or cryptocurrency prices at a particular point in time, but whether companies can prove that when two sets of market logics coexist, they can still manage risks, allocate responsibilities, and maintain trust with consistent systems and boundaries. If this can be achieved, the tension between cryptocurrency and stock prices will not disappear, but it will become a structure that can coexist in the long term, rather than a compliance time bomb that can explode at any moment.

Therefore, we would like to say that with great power comes great responsibility. We thank HashKey for being the first to take the plunge and face these pressures head-on, and we look forward to HashKey providing solutions, setting an example for more Web3 companies, and becoming a true industry leader.

Special Note: This article is an original work by the CryptoShaLaw team and represents only the author's personal views. It does not constitute legal advice or counsel on any specific matter. For reprint authorization, please contact shajunlvshi via private message.