Written after HashKey's listing: Behind the glory, how should the "coin" and "stock" be balanced?

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

The Crypto Salad backend has received many messages asking us to discuss what the listing of Web3 companies in Hong Kong represents, and whether it signifies a bright future for Web3 companies in Hong Kong similar to that of Coinbase.

Before envisioning the future, we want to point out a misconception: "listing" is not a successful endpoint. Especially for Web3 companies, the significance of listing as a "watershed" is even greater. The challenges HashKey will face in the future will no longer be just explaining why it is compliant and recognized, but rather a host of other practical issues.

For example, stock prices. Currently, both the economic and policy environments are not favorable. HashKey went public in this environment, and while it initially held steady without breaking below its issue price, it quickly fell, closing at a price roughly similar to the issue price, or even slightly lower. In the following days, the stock price fluctuated mostly below the issue price, with occasional rebounds that did not last long. Overall, it feels like the market is not rushing to push the price up just because it has successfully gone public; instead, it is taking a wait-and-see approach, deciding whether to buy or if the price is worth it based on how the company performs in the future.

In comparison with Coinbase, the performance of Coinbase's stock largely depends on one thing: whether there are people trading in the market. When the market heats up, trading volume increases, fees rise, and revenue and profits are immediately reflected in the financial statements, causing the stock price to move accordingly. Thus, the market tends to view Coinbase through the lens of a "cyclical stock" or "trading platform stock."

However, HashKey is not a company that solely relies on trading fees. For various well-known reasons, it resembles a comprehensive platform under a compliance framework: trading, custody, asset management, compliance services, institutional business—slow-paced, with long monetization paths, and it is unlikely to make a lot of money in the short term due to a single market cycle. Therefore, HashKey cannot directly apply Coinbase's valuation logic.

Some issues, however, do not depend on how well a company operates but are determined by its inherent characteristics. For instance, 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 computing and transaction fees on HashKey, and the price fluctuations of the token are legally and structurally separate from the stock price of the listed company. However, how can the two market pricing mechanisms of "stock price" and "token price" achieve sustainable balance? After all, these are two narratives of financial markets, two regulatory logics, and even investor expectations are vastly different. Any company that brings a token ecosystem to the public market cannot avoid this issue.

Today, we want to raise this question and share our thoughts.

In the context of traditional companies, stock price is a relatively clear composite indicator: it compresses a company's revenue capacity, cost structure, risk exposure, governance quality, and macro expectations into a tradable price. The key here is not whether the market is rational, but that the basic requirements of the securities market for information and accountability are clear: listed companies need to continuously disclose, provide verifiable operational data, maintain a relatively stable governance structure, and bear clear legal obligations to investors. Therefore, the requirement for listed companies is not that their business cannot have any fluctuations, but that information disclosure and risk boundaries must be sufficiently clear, allowing investors to make decisions within a comparable framework, which is relatively predictable.

Token price, on the other hand, is completely different. Even without discussing whether tokens possess securities attributes, from the perspective of market pricing mechanisms, the correlation between token price and the "company" itself is not that high. The greatest influences on token price are external variables, such as narratives, market expectations, liquidity structure, and most importantly—market sentiment.

Thus, stock price and token price are entirely two sets of pricing logic.

Now, with HashKey's listing, the two begin to coexist, and we can imagine some unavoidable contradictions: the securities market hopes companies make uncertainties transparent and controllable; the crypto market is accustomed to transforming uncertainties into narratives and volatility. How to balance this becomes a problem that must be solved.

For HashKey, the most challenging aspect is often not doing business, but maintaining "continuous compliance." HashKey has already met the compliance requirements for "virtual asset trading platforms" across various jurisdictions through various impressive means (see the Crypto Salad public account article “Why HashKey Can Become the 'First Crypto Stock in Hong Kong'?”). Now, as a listed company, HashKey must comply with regulations such as the Securities and Futures Ordinance and the Listing Rules.

Among these, information disclosure is the core of compliance for listed companies. According to relevant regulations, listed companies must ensure the fairness, timeliness, and accuracy of disclosures regarding significant news. However, in the Web3 business scenario, since the crypto market operates 24/7 and information spreads rapidly, the market has adapted to this speed. The addition of an ecosystem partner, the deployment of a node on a certain chain, or an update to a technical agreement—do these constitute significant information? Do they need to be disclosed, and how should they be disclosed? Furthermore, if the listed company has not completed a trading halt or announcement at the time of disclosure, will it face internal information leakage or be classified as market misconduct? Related key questions include:

• First, is there a conflict of interest? Is it possible to sacrifice the interests of one market investor to maintain the expectations of another market? For example, when deciding on profit distribution, should the focus be on increasing shareholder dividends to boost stock prices, or on strengthening token buybacks to support token prices?

• Second, is there a risk of being misunderstood as manipulating the market? Even if there is no subjective intent, there could still be an objective improper influence. Will HashKey's employees, who hold HSK, inevitably affect the market price of HSK due to their access to important non-public information?

This series of questions cannot actually be "blamed" on HashKey, as no Web3 company designs governance mechanisms with "conflict prevention" as the starting point. As an industry pioneer, these subtle and complex issues are ones that HashKey must address.

So how can HashKey achieve a "balance" between token and stock?

Crypto Salad believes that it is not about pursuing simultaneous rises and falls, but about allowing both prices to build trust within their respective rules.

Many people, when discussing the balance between token and stock, unconsciously fall into an intuition: it is best if they promote each other and ideally rise together, or at least not drag each other down. However, from a legal and governance perspective, true sustainable balance is not about "consistent trends," but about "consistent rules": stock prices must be understood within the disclosure and governance framework of the securities market, while token prices must be understood within the transparency and ecological expectation framework of the crypto market. The company must ensure it does not repeatedly jump between the two frameworks. In other words, the company does not need to promise how the token price will behave, nor how the stock price will behave; what the company needs to promise is that it has stable institutional arrangements for information disclosure and behavioral boundaries, capable of resisting short-term emotions, liquidity shocks, and narrative fluctuations.

From this perspective, HashKey's listing signifies much more for Web3 companies than just "entering the mainstream capital market." It marks the beginning of a new company form that must mature under pressure: retaining the innovative speed and ecological organization of Web3 business while achieving an auditable, disclosable, and accountable governance structure within the frameworks of corporate law and securities law.

What the industry truly needs to observe is not the performance of stock prices or token prices at any given moment, but whether the company can prove that when two sets of market logic coexist, it can still manage risks, allocate responsibilities, and maintain trust with consistent systems and boundaries. If it can achieve this, the tension between token price and stock price will not disappear, but it will transform into a structure that can coexist long-term, rather than a compliance time bomb ready to explode at any moment.

Therefore, we want to say, to wear the crown, one must bear its weight. We thank HashKey for being the first to face these pressures, and we look forward to HashKey providing answers and setting a model for more Web3 companies, becoming a true industry leader. Special Statement: This article is an original work by the Crypto Salad team, representing only the personal views of the author and does not constitute legal advice or consultation on specific matters. For reprints, please contact us privately to discuss authorization matters: shajunlvshi.