Fake HSBC stablecoins exploited real licensing news — HKMA issues urgent fraud alert.

Hong Kong's monetary authority warned on April 28 that tokens bearing the tickers 'HKDAP' and 'HSBC' had appeared in the market without being issued by, or associated with, any licensed stablecoin issuer. Both HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial — the only two institutions granted stablecoin licences under Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance — confirmed they have not yet released any regulated stablecoin to consumers.

The fraud is structurally different from typical token scams. There are no anonymous founders or implausible yield promises. Instead, the scammers borrowed the institutional gravity of a 160-year-old bank with US$3.2 trillion in assets — and the genuine legitimacy of a real, widely-covered licensing announcement — to do most of their work. A consumer who would dismiss an unknown token might pause at one bearing the HSBC name, and few would think to verify whether the licensed…