Written after HashKey's listing: Behind the brilliance, how should one balance the two bowls of "coin" and "stock"?

On December 17, 2025, the gong rang at HKEX, marking the listing of HashKey Group—the first licensed digital asset exchange in Hong Kong—as the city’s inaugural publicly traded crypto platform.

TechFlow has received numerous messages asking us to discuss what Web3 companies listing in Hong Kong signifies—whether it means these firms now have a bright future similar to Coinbase.

Before envisioning the future, we want to clarify a common misconception: "listing" is not an end point of success. For Web3 companies especially, going public serves more as a “watershed” moment. After this milestone, HashKey no longer only needs to justify its compliance and legitimacy—it now faces many other real-world challenges.

Take stock price, for example. The current economic and policy environment is far from ideal. HashKey managed to avoid an immediate drop on its first trading day, but prices quickly declined afterward, closing around or slightly below the IPO price. In the following days, the share price mostly hovered below the offering level, with occasional rebounds that didn’t last long. Overall, the market hasn't rushed to bid up the stock simply because of its successful listing. Instead, investors are waiting to see how the company actually performs before deciding whether it's worth buying or what valuation it deserves.

Compared to Coinbase, the performance of Coinbase’s stock largely hinges on one factor: whether people are trading. When the market heats up, trading volume rises, fees increase, and revenues and profits immediately show up on financial statements—driving the stock price accordingly. That’s why the market tends to view Coinbase through the lens of a “cyclical” or “exchange-type” stock.

But HashKey today isn’t solely reliant on trading fees. Due to various well-known reasons, it operates more like a comprehensive platform within a regulated framework—offering trading, custody, asset management, compliance services, and institutional solutions. Its pace is slower, monetization paths are longer, and it’s unlikely to generate significant short-term profits even during bullish cycles. Therefore, HashKey cannot be valued using the same logic applied to Coinbase.

Yet some issues aren't determined by operational performance but rather rooted in a company’s inherent structure. As a Web3 listed company, HashKey holds not only public shares but also its own ecosystem token (HSK).

Although HashKey clearly states in its prospectus, HSK is merely a gas token used to pay for computing and transaction costs on the HashKey platform, and fluctuations in the token price are legally and structurally separate from the listed company’s stock price. However, how can sustainable balance be achieved between these two distinct pricing mechanisms—“stock price” and “token price”? These represent two different financial narratives, two regulatory frameworks, and vastly different investor expectations. Any Web3 company bringing a token ecosystem into the public markets must confront this issue.

Today, we aim to raise this question and share our perspective.

In traditional corporate terms, stock price functions as a relatively clear composite indicator: it condenses a company’s revenue potential, cost structure, risk exposure, governance quality, and macro outlook into a single tradable value. The key isn't whether the market is rational, but that securities markets have established baseline requirements for information and accountability: listed companies must continuously disclose material information, provide verifiable operating data, maintain relatively stable governance structures, and bear defined legal obligations to investors. Thus, the requirement isn't that business operations remain free of volatility, but that disclosure and risk boundaries are sufficiently transparent, enabling investors to make decisions within a comparable framework—that is, achieving relative predictability.

Token price, however, is entirely different. Even without debating whether tokens qualify as securities, from a pricing mechanism standpoint, the link between token price and the “company” itself is often weak. Token prices are primarily driven by external factors such as narrative, market sentiment, liquidity structures, and most importantly—market psychology.

Therefore, stock price and token price operate under completely different valuation logics.

Now, with HashKey’s listing, these two systems coexist—and inevitable tensions arise: capital markets demand that uncertainty be made transparent and manageable; crypto markets thrive on transforming uncertainty into narrative and volatility. Balancing these forces becomes a critical challenge.

For HashKey, the hardest part may not be running the business—but maintaining “continuous compliance.” Through sophisticated efforts, HashKey has already met compliance requirements across jurisdictions regarding its role as a “virtual asset trading platform” (see TechFlow article “Why Did HashKey Become Hong Kong’s First Crypto IPO?”). Now, as a listed entity, it must also comply with regulations such as the Securities and Futures Ordinance and the Listing Rules.

Among these, information disclosure lies at the heart of listed company compliance. According to relevant laws, listed firms must ensure fairness, timeliness, and accuracy when disclosing material information. Yet in Web3 contexts, where crypto markets trade 24/7 and information spreads rapidly—where users expect instant updates—questions emerge: Does adding an ecosystem partner, deploying nodes on a new chain, or updating a protocol constitute material information? If so, must it be disclosed, and how? Furthermore, if disclosure occurs before a formal announcement or suspension, could this lead to insider information leaks or be deemed market misconduct? Related concerns include:

First, could conflicts of interest arise—where actions taken to support one market’s expectations harm investors in the other? For instance, when allocating profits, should the company prioritize shareholder dividends to boost stock price, or strengthen token buybacks to support HSK value?

Second, could there be risks of being perceived as market manipulation—even without intent—due to objective impacts? HashKey employees hold HSK tokens, and they inevitably access non-public material information through their roles. Could this inherently influence HSK’s market price?

These issues shouldn’t be blamed on HashKey. No Web3 company historically designed its governance with “conflict prevention” as a core principle. But as a pioneer, HashKey must now address these subtle and complex challenges.

So how should HashKey achieve “balance” between token and stock?

TechFlow believes the goal isn’t synchronized movement, but ensuring both prices build trust within their respective rule sets.

When discussing token-stock balance, many fall into the intuitive trap: ideally, the two should reinforce each other, move upward together, or at least avoid dragging each other down. But from a legal and governance perspective, truly sustainable balance isn’t about “moving in sync,” but “aligning rules”:

Stock price should be understood within the securities market’s disclosure and governance framework; token price should be interpreted within the crypto market’s transparency and ecosystem expectation framework. The company must ensure it doesn’t jump back and forth between these two systems. In other words, the company doesn’t need to promise anything about token price or stock price—it needs to commit to having stable institutional arrangements for information disclosure and behavioral boundaries, capable of withstanding short-term emotions, liquidity shocks, and narrative swings.

From this angle, HashKey’s listing carries significance beyond “entering mainstream capital markets.” It marks the forced maturation of a new corporate form—one that must preserve the innovation speed and ecosystem organization of Web3 while establishing auditability, disclosability, and accountability under corporate and securities law.

What the industry should truly watch isn’t the momentary performance of stock or token prices, but whether the company can prove that, amid two coexisting market logics, it can still manage risk, allocate responsibility, and uphold trust through consistent systems and clear boundaries. If achieved, the tension between token and stock won’t vanish—but it will transform into a structure capable of long-term coexistence, rather than a ticking compliance time bomb.

Therefore, we say: to wear the crown, one must bear its weight. We thank HashKey for being the first to step forward and face these pressures head-on, and we look forward to seeing it provide answers—setting a precedent and becoming a true industry leader for future Web3 companies.