Ronald Leung’s original, dated commentary is reproduced below. Views, invitations and product references reflect the time of publication; they are not investment advice, an offer, a guarantee of return or confirmation of current availability.
Every Hong Konger knows the red lane.
You fly home carrying more than HK$120,000 in yen, and you know which channel you are walking through before anyone tells you. Customs. Nobody needs a lawyer for that one. Now keep the same person and the same yen, and put them in front of a screen holding a leveraged JPY/USD position. Who is watching that? The SFC. Also obvious.
Borrow that yen interbank to build reserves and you get a third answer: the HKMA.
One currency, three government bodies, and the currency itself did nothing. What decided it every time was what the holder was doing with it — carrying it across a border, trading it for a return, funding a balance sheet. The activity picks the regulator. The asset never does.
Which is why "who regulates gold" has never had a one-word answer, and why a new product takes more time to explain than to build.
Disclosure: Esperanza operates a tokenised gold business. — Let's open the statute. A new breakdown every week.