Hong Kong was recently in the news after Starbucks announced that they are accepting bitcoin payments in their coffee shops across the country. However, after few days, the reality was something different. Those who tried paying with bitcoin for their coffee in Starbucks were politely told by the staff that they do not accept digital currency payments.
This is not the case with just Starbucks but Hong Kong as a whole is still lagging behind when it comes to the adoption of latest fintech applications. The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute has already expressed concerns about the lag in technology adoption in the country’s financial technology sector. The suggestion given by the research institute in this regard involves spending more resources into blockchain research.
Blockchain technology has already proved itself to be more than capable of bringing a transformation to the banking and financial industry. If Hong Kong has to keep up with other financial powerhouses of the world like London and New York, then it has to innovate fast. Bitcoin technology is already being used for numerous purposes other than executing and recording bitcoin transactions. It is currently being worked upon by a banking consortium with over 43 international banks in it along with a fintech solutions company called R3CEV . Even the Australian Securities Exchange is upgrading its systems with blockchain based trade settlement system and more.
Even though Hong Kong has many bitcoin companies operating from its territory, the adoption of bitcoin tech has not been explored enough. According to the Director of Scientific Data and Information Security at Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute , the bitcoin blockchain technology can be sued to certify transactions in real-time. The transparency of bitcoin blockchain will make it easily viewable by anyone, which will help curb […]
