Author: Jae, PANews

In March, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre was bustling with crowds. The sea breeze of Victoria Harbour brought a damp warmth into the exhibition hall as the annual "Futu Investment Expo" kicked off amidst the clamour. According to Futu's statistics, the number of visitors exceeded 12,000, highlighting Futu's appeal and the investment enthusiasm of the attendees.

In the past, when investment was mentioned, the first thing that often came to mind were Futu's IPOs, trading of Hong Kong and US stocks, and financial products like mutual funds and ETFs. However, this year, for the first time, a dedicated Crypto booth in an exhibition area that was previously dominated by traditional assets became one of the focal points of the event.

The main venue was fully packed. Tom Lee, chairman of Bitmine and a well-known analyst on Wall Street, made a prediction to nearly a thousand audience members: AI Agents will become the next billion-level user group for blockchain.

Meanwhile, concurrent with this exhibition, a piece of news was brewing that could rewrite the landscape of virtual asset trading in Hong Kong.

A license is a ticket, from "borrowing a ship to go to sea" to "building a ship to go to sea"

Throughout financial history, the level of compliance often determines the height of the ceiling.

Starting in 2024, with the SFC allowing licensed institutions to provide virtual asset trading services to retail investors, a sector that once floated on the edge of regulation has officially entered the "compliance deep water zone."

The high threshold can be inferred from the number of licensed institutions.

In July 2024, Futu completed the upgrade of its license No. 1. Based on its existing securities and fund trading services, it obtained the qualifications to provide virtual asset trading for eligible investors.

In January 2025, Futu officially obtained the VATP license, becoming the representative brokerage among nine licensed institutions in Hong Kong, with both internet genes and a retail user base of millions.

Today, Futu has already passed the third hurdle.

On March 26, Futu Group announced that its Hong Kong internet securities firm Futu Securities will fully integrate with its own licensed Virtual Asset Trading Platform (VATP) PantherTrade, creating Asia's first self-built Web2 + Web3 ecological closed loop.

Futu Group's Managing Director Zeng Yuchao stated: Futu is committed to building a comprehensive financial ecosystem. With the deep integration of its self-built compliant virtual asset exchange, combined with its leading advantages on the brokerage platform and continuously deepening product services, Futu is accelerating its transformation into a key bridge connecting traditional finance and virtual assets.

Clearly, this exchange, built by the leading retail brokerage in Hong Kong, is dismantling the high walls that have kept traditional finance and virtual assets apart for years, achieving a strategic leap from being a "channel provider" to an "infrastructure provider."

Since then, Futu has also become one of the few licensed institutions, following OSL and HashKey, to possess its own virtual asset trading infrastructure.

For a long time, Hong Kong’s compliant virtual asset trading market has been largely dominated by native platforms like OSL and Hashkey. They hold licenses and upstream infrastructure, controlling the discourse on custodial and matching services.

Brokerages wishing to enter the market often had to connect with upstream platforms to provide trading services for users. This "outsourcing" model, while light, has inherent limitations: new currencies are subject to external control, and business flexibility is restricted.

The significance of the VATP license is to regain business sovereignty.

For retail users, Futu will have more autonomy and initiative in choosing new currencies and can quickly expand under the compliance oversight of the SFC.

For professional investors and institutions, Futu will not only support a more comprehensive range of currencies but, under the guidance of the SFC's new policy, also provide securities financing for virtual assets to eligible investors. Additionally, leveraging its high-quality wealth management system, it will offer OTC block trading for high-net-worth clients and even provide customized services related to ETF issuance for fund managers.

Compliance licensing grants Futu autonomy and independence, but the costs are equally clear: higher operational costs and heavier regulatory pressure.

AI trading "equalization", dismantling the barriers of quantification

If the compliance infrastructure is the foundation for Futu to unlock its business ceiling, then AI is the accelerator.

At this exhibition, Futu emphasized the comprehensive upgrade of its AI trading services. Tailoring to the characteristics of virtual asset trading, Futu evolved the "Niu Niu AI" from a "question assistant" to an intelligent engine covering the entire cycle of investment.

The logic is quite straightforward: global market information is complex, price fluctuations are drastic, and manual monitoring is exceedingly challenging. Automated trading has long been a standard for institutions, but for ordinary investors, coding ability, strategy development capability, and system security competency are formidable obstacles.

Futu's solution is to minimize the barriers to automated trading using AI.

By December 2025, Futu will officially launch AI algorithm trading (AI Algo Trading), allowing users to have the system execute trades automatically under set strategy conditions and risk control rules. In 2026, Futu will also introduce a function for users to create custom indicators using AI.

What is even more noteworthy is that Futu has also released a new version of OpenAPI and dedicated skills for AI agents.

There is a common safety concern in the industry: when AI agents interface with trading systems, trading passwords might be directly exposed to AI. Futu's new version of OpenAPI will solve this core pain point from the operational mechanism, providing a financial-grade secure infrastructure for AI-driven automated trading.

AI Agent Skills are an added-value intelligent tool provided by Futu, empowering users to obtain market data through natural language, facilitating zero-barrier analysis, execution, and back-testing of strategy performance, and timely development of strategies in volatile markets.

According to Yao Wenqing, head of Futu's AI Growth Center: Looking ahead, any AI agent can seamlessly connect via Futu's OpenAPI to achieve automated trading processes. Users do not need to write a single line of code; simply through natural language dialogue, they can complete the entire closed loop from environment setup, strategy creation, to back-testing optimization and live trading.

For "cross-border" users who trade both Hong Kong and US stocks and invest in virtual currencies, AI is no longer just a decorative enhancement, but a necessary tool to combat volatility and overcome human greed.

Futu deeply understands that only the continuous evolution of tools in the face of the high-frequency volatility in the crypto market can lead to deep user loyalty to the platform.

This precisely aligns with Tom Lee's prediction made during his speech. He pointed out that the integration of AI agents and blockchain will be an important growth engine for the future crypto market: as AI agents move out of closed environments into real markets to perform tasks, blockchain will be needed to manage identities, complete payment settlements, and achieve neutral coordination.

Futu is strategically positioned at the intersection of this trend.

Of course, technical challenges also exist. The performance of AI trading strategies under extreme market conditions still lacks sufficient validation, and the accuracy of natural language commands and the non-explainability of AI decisions remain common difficulties in the industry.

Integration of stocks and coins, a single account for traditional and digital assets

Now, what sets Futu apart from all native virtual asset exchanges is its one-stop cross-asset allocation capability known as "integration of stocks and coins."

In traditional investment scenarios, if a user wants to allocate both Hong Kong and US stocks and virtual assets simultaneously, they have to jump back and forth between brokers and virtual asset exchanges. Currency exchange, transfers, and fund allocation usually take several days, leading to inefficiency and hiding risks related to compliance and fund security.

Even leading native platforms can only circulate within the closed loop of virtual assets, unable to reach the vast user base and funding pools of the traditional securities market.

What Futu is doing is packing these two fragmented markets into a single account.

Within the Futu Niu Niu ecosystem, users can complete one-stop trading of traditional financial assets such as Hong Kong and US stocks, funds, and virtual assets through the same account, complemented by 24/7 currency transfers in Hong Kong dollars and US dollars, with funds arriving in as little as 4 seconds, enabling seamless fund transfer between stock accounts and virtual asset accounts.

This is the advantage that native virtual asset exchanges cannot replicate.

Data shows that Futu's trading volume in Hong Kong stocks has remained ranked first among retail brokerages in Hong Kong for many years. By the end of 2025, the download count of the Futu Niu Niu App in Hong Kong has also ranked first among its peers.

This means that Futu holds a large traditional financial investor base, and its brand trust and user foundation are hard for crypto-native platforms to compare with.

For users who are already accustomed to trading stocks on Futu, configuring virtual assets on the same platform is almost a natural choice.

Futu's entrance will connect the largest retail investor pool in Hong Kong with compliant virtual asset trading, potentially changing the traffic pattern across the entire sector.

It is worth pondering that there are significant differences in risk preferences, trading habits, and cognitive levels between crypto investors and traditional investors. How to balance the needs of both user groups, avoiding the "integration of stocks and coins" becoming just a concept, will depend on the actual product design and user conversion capability.

"We believe that investors who choose Futu are serious about their wealth, and Futu's mission is to continuously upgrade AI-driven tools and services to accompany each investor throughout their entire wealth journey." This statement by Xie Zhijian, Managing Director of Futu Securities, sheds light on Futu's long-term vision.

Compliance licensing has dismantled the wall between traditional finance and virtual assets, AI tools have broken down the wall between institutions and retail investors, and the integration of stocks and coins has torn down the walls between different asset classes.

Futu has obtained the entry ticket for the next cycle. With Futu Securities integrating PantherTrade, Futu's new journey is quietly set to sail. As for what the future holds, time will still need to tell.

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