The Zhitong Finance App learned that the “Euromoney” 2026 Market Award was announced, and Xinhuo Group (01611) won the “Best Digital Master Broker in the Asia-Pacific Region”. There is no shortage of established financial giants such as UBS and DBS among the institutions on the same list. Xinhuo became the only Hong Kong Web3 native financial institution selected. The signal is more than just an award — it reflects the main competitive axis of the Hong Kong digital asset market and is shifting from “who has a license” to “who can turn compliance into an institutional-level service”.
After Asia-Pacific institutional funds entered the market, the biggest pain point was not the inability to buy coins, but the fragmentation of infrastructure: liquidity was scattered between CEX and DEX, there were various escrow schemes, complicated transfer periods between fiat currency and on-chain funds, and different compliance standards. The value of Prime Brokerage (Prime Brokerage) is the integration of transaction execution, financing, escrow, clearing, and data reporting into the same back office. The solution proposed by Xinhuo is an “integrated digital brokerage platform” that exports private-level services to financial institutions, listed companies, family offices, and high-net-worth customers.
This set of positions is highly compatible with its business model. Xinhuo Technology's early revenue gripper was OTC (OTC), which was monetized through trading price spreads and matching commissions; however, OTC with low gross profit and volume was only a traffic entry point. The real barrier was at the back end — the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission Class 1, 4, and 9 licenses plus TCSP trust licenses, which enabled it to fully entrust asset management, custody, and digital trust for virtual assets; in 2025, it also added the second compliance market and trading scenario.
The financial structure also confirms this path: revenue for fiscal year 2025 was about HK$8.66 billion, a sharp increase of more than four times over the previous year, and the main force still comes from OTC volume; however, what the market should look at is not the revenue growth rate, but the number of customers and AUM — the number of customers rose from 260 to 1,058 by the end of September 2026, and the scale of asset management increased by about 69% year on year. Institutional accounts and high-net-worth accounts are more sticky, and the rate space is superior to retail transactions, which is the key to the transformation of Xinhuo from “traders” to “private digital assets.”
Looking ahead, the number of virtual asset platform licenses in Hong Kong has surpassed 10. After compliance became standard, the differentiation was RWA, quantitative strategy, custodian trust, and cross-border institutional services. The essence of Xinhuo's wave of awards is to package “licensing+OTC+ custodianship+asset management” into the main broker's narrative; whether customer growth can be settled into a stable revenue from handling fees and management fees is the real test after 2026.