Financial regulators getting comfortable with digital currencies will likely go a long way toward gambling regulators adopting them too. That means, Hong Kong’s securities regulator putting out new blanket regulations for the medium of exchange is an important step towards a digital currency future.

The Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission have announced that all digital currencies, regardless of whether they are considered securities are not, will have to meet certain regulations. This changes a previous opt-in policy for currencies that were not designated as securities, and is regarded as a fix to a loophole.

By choosing not to opt-in to regulations, some digital currency purveyors could argue that their token was not a security and work outside the rules. That opened up a huge grey area where some coins could be used for potentially nefarious purposes but claim they had nothing holding them back, and prevented legitimate businesses from seriously investing in the digital currency revolution.

SFC chief executive Ashley Alder explained it at a recent conference, “This is a significant limitation, as under the current legislative framework, if a platform operator is really determined to operate completely off the regulatory radar, it can do so simply by ensuring that its traded crypto assets are not within the legal definition of a security.”