HONG KONG — Hong Kong is ready to begin issuing the first of its stablecoin licenses next month, the Special Administration Region's Financial Secretary said Wednesday.

Hong Kong will only issue a small batch of licenses initially, Hong Kong's Paul Chan Mo-Po said Wednesday at CoinDesk's Consensus Hong Kong conference.

"In giving our licenses, we ensure that licensees have novel use cases, a credible and sustainable business model and strong regulatory compliance capabilities," he said.

Hong Kong is also moving to finalize its licensing regime for custodian service providers, he said, and looking to introduce legislation this summer.

"Together with the framework already in place, this will ensure that our regulatory regime comprehensively covers the team of the digital asset ecosystem," he said.

Speaking more broadly, Chan pointed to three trends in particular maturing at this moment: The growth of tokenized products in the real world, increasing interaction between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance and the growing ties between artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assets.

"Tokenization initiatives are moving from proof of concept to real world deployment supported by more institutional adoption government bonds, money market funds and other more traditional financial instruments are increasingly being issued onchain, using digital ledgers to enhance settlement efficiency enable fractional ownership and unlock liquidity in assets that have traditionally been less liquid."

He also pointed to increasing growth in AI.

"As AI agents become capable of making and executing decisions independently, we may begin to see the early forms of what some call the machine economy, where AI agents can hold and transfer digital assets, pay for services and transact with one another onchain," Chan said.