HK Legislator’s Firm to Lure 1,000 Web3 Start-ups Over 3 Years

G-Rocket hopes to attract 1,000 Web3 start-ups to Hong Kong by providing banking, government services, and office space.

Over the next three years, a start-up accelerator co-founded by Hong Kong legislative council member Jonny Ng Kit-Chong hopes to attract 1,000 Web3 businesses to the city-state.

Ng Kit-Chong has been a member of the legislative council for the election committee constituency since January of this year. The engineer and politician has declared ownership of approximately 40 different companies, indicating that he has his finger in many pies.

One such company is G-Rocket, a start-up accelerator he co-founded in 2016 with Casper Wong.

Wong is the current CEO and spoke to the South China Morning Post on December 23 about the company’s new “Hong Kong Web 3.0 Hub” program.

The CEO stated that G-initial Rocket’s goal is to assist 100 Web3 start-ups in getting their businesses off the ground, with the goal of increasing the number to 1,000 within three years.

“In the post-pandemic era, we hope to help bring good companies and talent back to Hong Kong,” Wong said.

Wong specifically stated that the firm will collaborate with the virtual ZA Bank, Cyberport, a government-run incubator, and property conglomerate New World Development to help Hong Kong startups gain access to office space, banking, and government services.

G-initiative Rocket’s is part of a larger push by the Hong Kong government to make the Chinese special administrative region (SAR) a crypto hub on par with Singapore.

Elizabeth Wong, the head of the fintech unit at Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), announced a slew of progressive regulatory crypto proposals in late October, including the legalization of virtual asset trading.

“We will put in place timely and necessary crash barriers in accordance with international standards, so that virtual asset innovations can thrive in Hong Kong in a sustainable manner,” the government said in an Oct. 31 statement.

The SFC also began allowing listings for exchange traded funds (ETFs) that offer exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) on October 31, with CSOP Asset Management among the first to participate.

Cointelegraph reported on December 15 that CSOP Asset Management had raised $73.6 million in investments ahead of the next day’s listing of two crypto futures ETFs on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Hong Kong’s legislative council also amended its anti-money laundering (AML) and terrorist financing system on December 8 to include virtual asset service providers alongside traditional finance institutions.