Crypto ETFs in Hong Kong: every spot Bitcoin, Ether and Solana fund on HKEX

A crypto ETF in Hong Kong is a fund listed on HKEX that holds real bitcoin, ether or solana and trades like any stock. Eleven spot virtual-asset ETFs are authorised by the SFC as of 2026, starting with six that listed on 30 April 2024. You buy them through an ordinary securities account, pay a yearly fee of roughly 0.3% to 1%, and never have to manage a wallet.

That last point is the whole pitch. For a lot of people in Hong Kong the scary part of crypto is not the price chart but the plumbing: seed phrases, network fees, cloned exchange websites, the stories about fake OTC shops paying out in hell banknotes. An ETF swaps all of that for the same brokerage app you already use for Tencent or the Tracker Fund. The trade-off is that you own fund units, not coins. You cannot withdraw the bitcoin, you trade only when HKEX is open, and you pay a management fee every year for as long as you hold.

This guide lists every Hong Kong crypto ETF we could confirm, explains the in-kind creation quirk that made these funds different from the American ones, shows where staking has crept into the Ether funds, and ends with a blunt section on when an ETF beats buying coins on a licensed crypto exchange, and when it does not.

What a Hong Kong crypto ETF is

The SFC authorises these products under its circular on funds with exposure to virtual assets. The rules are stricter than a casual reader might expect. A spot ETF must buy and sell its coins only through SFC-licensed virtual asset trading platforms, and it must keep them with a Hong Kong regulated custodian: a licensed platform, a bank, or a bank's locally incorporated subsidiary. The Investor and Financial Education Council notes that the holdings sit mainly in cold wallets, with only temporary hot-wallet exposure when coins move in or out.

In practice that means almost every Hong Kong spot ETF uses OSL or HashKey as its trading venue and sub-custodian. If you have read our reviews of OSL and HashKey Exchange, you have already met the plumbing behind most of these funds. The ETF sits one layer above: a trustee, a fund manager, and a portfolio of coins held in segregated accounts at those platforms.

The market is still small. A Legislative Council paper from May 2026 put assets in Hong Kong's virtual-asset ETFs at about US$536 million in February 2026, up 85% since launch, with average daily turnover near US$6 million. By comparison, a single large American Bitcoin ETF can trade more than that in its first minutes. Small funds are not a problem for a long-term holder, but they matter if you plan to trade in and out, because thin order books mean wider spreads on the screen.

Hong Kong crypto ETF list: every spot Bitcoin, Ether and Solana fund

The table below is our Hong Kong crypto ETF list as of September 2026. The first six are confirmed by the SFC's own listing-day speech. The later five come from issuer pages and the HKEX listing announcements reported by the trade press. The LegCo paper confirms there were eleven in total. Codes shown are the HKD counters unless stated; several funds also have USD counters (usually a 9xxx code) and some have RMB counters (8xxxx).

Two things stand out. First, Bitcoin and Ether funds come in near-identical pairs from the same issuers, so you are mostly choosing on fee, liquidity and counter currency, not on strategy. Second, the ChinaAMC Solana ETF made Hong Kong the first market in Asia with a spot Solana fund, listed on 27 October 2025. If you searched for a Solana ETF in Hong Kong, 3460 is the one. Its management fee is 0.99%, and custodian and administration costs are capped at 1% of net assets, so the estimated ongoing charge is about 1.99% a year.

A note on sources: management fees marked "reported" come from market-data pages and press, not from the Key Facts Statement itself, because the original issuers' fund pages did not load for us. Pando's figures come from its own product pages. Before you buy, open the Key Facts Statement on the issuer's site or on HKEXnews; it is the legally binding summary.

In-kind vs cash creation: the Hong Kong difference

When the Hong Kong funds launched, the headline difference from the United States was in-kind creation. The IFEC explains the two routes. In a cash creation, a participating dealer hands the fund money and the fund buys coins on an SFC-licensed platform. In an in-kind creation, the dealer delivers the coins themselves into the fund's custody account, and those coins may come from wallets held locally or overseas.

Why should a retail buyer care? For you, nothing changes at the till: you buy units on HKEX for cash either way. In-kind matters to large holders who already own bitcoin and want to swap it into a regulated, brokerage-friendly wrapper without selling first. Pando's pages show how this works in practice: its Bitcoin ETF lists seven participating dealers who accept both in-kind and cash requests and four who handle cash only. For the Ethereum fund, Victory Securities, Eddid and Fosun International are among the dealers taking in-kind creations.

If you are a family office or a professional investor sitting on coins from years ago, ask your broker whether it acts as a participating dealer or can route an in-kind request through one. For ordinary savers, in-kind is a nice story about market structure and nothing more.

Staking inside Ether ETFs

On 7 April 2025 the SFC issued circulars that let licensed platforms offer staking and let SFC-authorised virtual-asset funds stake part of their holdings. Hong Kong moved faster than New York here. The Bosera HashKey Ether ETF (3009) was approved to stake and began staking from 25 April 2025, which its issuers described as a first for a spot ETF in the Asia-Pacific. The ChinaAMC Ether ETF (3046) followed, with OSL providing the staking service from 15 May 2025.

The LegCo paper says three virtual-asset ETFs were approved to stake by early 2026. We could confirm two by name; the third was not identified in the public sources we checked. Not every Ether fund stakes: Pando's product page states plainly that its Ethereum ETF does not stake any of its ether.

Staking can add a small yield that offsets part of the fee, but it also adds risk: slashing if a validator misbehaves, and a delay in unbonding if many holders redeem at once. Read the prospectus section on staking before assuming it is free money.

Fees and what you really pay

Three layers of cost apply. The first is the fund's ongoing charge, which includes the management fee plus custody, trustee and administration costs. Harvest set the lowest management fee of the launch group at 0.30%; Bosera HashKey's Bitcoin fund shows a 0.60% net expense ratio after a launch waiver that ran from 30 April to 31 August 2024; ChinaAMC's Bitcoin fund is reported at 0.99%. Newer funds are higher all-in: Pando estimates 1.99% ongoing charges for its Bitcoin ETF and 1.60% for its Ethereum ETF.

The second layer is your broker. Online brokers in Hong Kong usually charge a small commission per trade plus the standard HKEX trading fee and SFC levy. Banks tend to charge more. The third layer is the bid-ask spread on the screen, which can be wider than you expect on a quiet afternoon because turnover in the whole segment averages only about US$6 million a day.

Compare that with buying the coin itself. A licensed platform may charge from zero to a fraction of a percent to trade and nothing to hold. ZA Bank now charges no commission but a 0.8% platform fee on each crypto trade, with a HK$15 minimum per order, down from the 1.5% standard rate reported at launch (see our ZA Bank review). A Bitcoin ATM can cost 13% plus HK$100 per purchase at the largest operator, as our Bitcoin ATM guide documents. So the ETF is not the cheapest way to buy, but it can be the cheapest way to hold for a few years inside an account you already have, with no withdrawal fees and no hardware to buy.

How to buy a Bitcoin ETF in Hong Kong

The process is almost boring, which is the point. Any broker or bank that gives you access to HKEX stocks can sell you these funds. HSBC is a good example of the split: it does not offer spot crypto trading to Hong Kong customers, but it has let them buy Hong Kong-listed virtual-asset ETFs since June 2023. Online brokers such as Futu and Tiger offer both the ETFs and, through their affiliated licensed platforms, the coins themselves; our Futu and PantherTrade review covers that setup.

1. Open or use a securities accountAny HK broker or bank with HKEX access. HKID or passport, address proof, and the usual risk-profile questionnaire.
2. Pass the virtual-asset checkBrokers are expected to check that you understand virtual-asset products before your first trade. Expect a short knowledge questionnaire.
3. Fund the accountTransfer HKD by FPS or bank transfer. USD works if you want a USD counter such as 9430 or 9460.
4. Pick the fund and counterSearch the code, e.g. 3439 for Harvest Bitcoin or 3460 for ChinaAMC Solana. Check the board lot size and the spread.
5. Place a limit order in HKEX hoursUse a limit price close to the indicated net asset value. HKEX trades roughly 09:30–12:00 and 13:00–16:00 on weekdays; bitcoin trades 24/7.

That last detail catches people out. Bitcoin moves on Saturday night; your ETF cannot. If a big move happens over a weekend or a public holiday, the ETF opens on Monday already repriced, and you had no way to react. For long-term holders that is a feature, not a bug. For anyone who wants to react to the market in real time, it is a reason to hold coins on a platform instead.

Spot vs futures ETFs vs owning coins

Before the spot funds, Hong Kong already had crypto futures ETFs. CSOP Bitcoin Futures ETF (3066) and CSOP Ether Futures ETF (3068) listed on 16 December 2022 as Asia's first, each with a reported 1.99% management fee. Samsung Bitcoin Futures Active ETF (3135) followed. These hold CME futures contracts, not coins. The IFEC warns that CME Bitcoin and Ether futures have spent long stretches in contango, meaning each monthly roll into a pricier contract costs money. Over a year that drag can be substantial. Inverse virtual-asset products, which rise when prices fall and rebalance daily, also trade on HKEX; searches for a "Bitcoin inverse ETF Hong Kong" lead there, but they are short-term trading tools, not holdings.

Owning coins directly on an SFC-licensed platform gives you 24-hour trading and the option to move them into your own wallet, something our crypto wallet guide explains in detail. It also puts you one step from the scams that do not touch ETF holders: cloned exchange domains, fake OTC desks, romance-investment pitches. Our crypto scam guide is worth ten minutes if you go that route.

Tax and stamp duty

Hong Kong has no capital gains tax. If you buy ETF units as a long-term investment and sell at a profit, an individual normally owes nothing. The Inland Revenue Department looks at the "badges of trade": frequent, organised, short-term dealing that looks like a business carried on in Hong Kong can fall under profits tax. That test is the same for ETFs as for coins, and our crypto tax guide walks through it.

One genuine advantage of the ETF wrapper is paperwork. Hong Kong waived stamp duty on transfers of ETF units in 2015, and your broker's annual statement gives you a clean record of every trade. With coins spread across two platforms and a hardware wallet, building that record is your job. Tax treatment of any staking income inside a fund stays at the fund level; you receive no separate coin rewards.

When a crypto ETF makes more sense

An ETF is the better tool when your goal is simple exposure and you value convenience over control. It suits you if you already have a brokerage or bank investment account and want crypto to sit alongside your other holdings in one statement. It suits you if you are nervous about seed phrases, or you want to hold for years and never plan to send coins anywhere. It suits company treasuries and trusts that can hold listed securities but not raw crypto. And it suits anyone who wants SFC-authorised product rules around custody without learning how custody works.

Coins make more sense if you want to trade outside HKEX hours, move funds on-chain, pay someone in USDT, or avoid paying 0.3% to 2% a year forever. Over a decade, even a 1% ongoing charge adds up. For that route, start with our list of SFC-licensed exchanges or the quickest way to buy crypto in Hong Kong, and read up on the wider Hong Kong crypto regulation picture before choosing.

A practical middle path many Hong Kong investors use: hold the long-term position in a low-fee spot Bitcoin ETF inside the brokerage account, and keep a small amount of actual coins on a licensed platform for learning, transfers or weekend trading. Nothing here is investment advice; it is simply how the two tools divide the work.

Frequently asked questions

Sources & further reading

1. SFC — speech at the VA spot ETF listing ceremony · 30 Apr 2024
2. LegCo FA Panel paper CB(1)530/2026(07) — digital asset development · 28 May 2026
3. IFEC — Virtual asset spot ETFs · updated 27 Oct 2025
4. IFEC — Virtual asset futures ETFs and inverse products · updated 22 Jul 2024
5. SFC circular 25EC21 — VA funds and staking · 7 Apr 2025
6. Pando Finance — Bitcoin ETF (2818) product page · checked Sep 2026
7. Pando Finance — Ethereum ETF (3085) product page · checked Sep 2026
8. ETF Express — ChinaAMC launches spot Solana ETF on HKEX · 27 Oct 2025
9. ETF Express — MicroBit spot crypto ETFs launched on HKEX · 25 Aug 2025
10. PR Newswire — Bosera HashKey Ether ETF approved for staking · 11 Apr 2025

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