Fake HSBC bank stablecoins hit the market showcasing dangerous new crypto scam wave

A notable development has hit the crypto markets. The most dangerous stablecoin scam probably looks nothing like what most people picture. There's no anonymous founder, no Discord full of bots, no promise of returns that defy basic economic logic. Instead, it has a professional ticker, institutional branding, and a name that tens of millions of people have trusted with their savings for generations.

That's the premise at the center of a regulatory alert Hong Kong's monetary authority issued this week, and it deserves considerably more attention than a fraud warning typically receives. On April 28, the HKMA warned the public that tokens carrying the tickers “HKDAP” and “HSBC” had appeared in the market without being issued by or associated with any licensed stablecoin issuer, and that both licensed issuers had confirmed they hadn't released any regulated stablecoins yet. The institutional gravity those names carry in the minds of ordinary consumers, built over more than a century of banking history, was the vehicle for the deception, and that's a fundamentally different kind of scam from anything the stablecoin market has had to contend with before.

Market Dynamics

The HSBC scam that doesn't need to promise anything To understand why this is so structurally different from ordinary token fraud, it helps to know what HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial actually represent in this context. On April 10, the HKMA granted its first stablecoin issuer licences to the two institutions under the Stablecoins Ordinance, which took effect in August 2025. From a pool of 36 applicants, only these two were approved, a roughly 5.

6% approval rate that shows just how demanding the regime was at launch. covered the passage of the enabling legislation in May 2025 and the activation of the licensing regime that August. The framework was built around credibility as its central premise: full reserve backing, identity-verified wallets, and ongoing disclosure requirements embedded from the outset.

HSBC plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin in the second half of 2026, fully backed at all times by high-quality liquid assets held in segregated accounts, integrated into its PayMe platform and the HSBC HK Mobile Banking App. PayMe alone serves over 3. 3 million users, giving the bank an immediate retail distribution channel the moment the product goes live.

Market Impact

Anchorpoint, a joint venture backed by Standard Chartered , Animoca Brands , and HKT, is targeting a phased rollout of its HKDAP token from the second quarter of 2026, with each token backed 1:1 by high-quality HKD-denominated reserves. reported on the formation of the Anchorpoint joint venture and its early HKMA filing as the licensed HKD stablecoin competition first took shape. As of the HKMA's April 28 alert, neither product has reached a single consumer.

The fake tokens appeared in a window that the real ones hadn't filled yet. Crypto scams usually depend on psychological pressure: extravagant promises, manufactured urgency, and the gradual erosion of a target's skepticism. But bank-name fraud is completely different.

The institutional gravity is already established in the public mind; the scammer simply rents it. A consumer who'd scroll past an unknown token might pause at one bearing the HSBC name, an institution with US$3. 2 trillion in assets and a 160-year operating history.

Crypto markets are watching this development closely as investors weigh its potential impact on prices.