I was SHOCKED by Hong Kong Crypto (FinTech Week 2023)

So you guys have been asking me this, will the Asian bulls pump up the cryptocurrency market? And honestly, there's no better place to find out what the vibe is in Hong Kong and, well, general broader Asia than Hong Kong FinTech Week. You can actually see it's packed with people in suits. This is organized by the Hong Kong government. So this is the Treasury Bureau Investment, the Securities and Futures Commission Hong Kong Day. This event has been around for a long time, getting traditional money. Now, what's different about this year, I'll show you guys. But what's different about this year is there's a lot more discussion about Web3. So if you just look at the logos here, you can see the traditional ones, right? This is like the traditional money, right? The traditional billions and trillions of dollars that piles up in Hong Kong. Traditionally, it's been, you know, HSBC, Bank of China, Standard Charter. But this year, yeah, we're seeing a lot more different logos up here. So we have Crypto.com over there. We have Hashkey, which is the group that is launching the first licensed exchange in Hong Kong. We'll cover a lot more about that because this is super exciting. The way they're approaching this launch of the exchange is like, whoa, like it's aggressive. And it's really about moving institutional money, big money into crypto. So I'm pretty excited to see what this is. And you can just tell the people in suits, they're not coming here to find out about HSBC, right? No one cares about HSBC. We already know about HSBC. People are curious about what is happening with blockchain. So let's go inside and find out what's happening. All right, so we got a team here. Long time no see. Media pass. Oh shit, Ron. Ron's got a actual pair of pants right now. Exactly. He tried to come into this event with shorts. Didn't really work that well. All right. Michael, I was because I was holding the camera. They didn't scan my thing because they're like, okay, you're free to go. Nice. Look at the banks. Yeah. Digital currency innovation, baby. The EVE. Wow, it's actually super legit. Because the one in Web3 Festival, there's very few banks, I'd say. Yeah. This is like, I mean, this is Hong Kong government, right? Yeah. We're talking about old money here. Old money. Old money. Old traditional money. It's good to have Ron's perspective. Because it's like, oh, hey, Sampax VR. Let's go, Sandbox. But I really have gaming here. Let's check out the Anamooka booth. Oh, hey, it's Yacht. Hello, how are you? Good to see you. Hello. Yeah, hi. How's it? Is it exciting for you guys? Yeah, it's very exciting. There's a lot of people this year. Yeah? I think people are quite happy with the different things. But it's interesting, right? Because these are more traditional finance people, right? So it's like their first time playing a game or something. I agree. I agree. Yeah, you agree? Okay, all right. I agree. It's funny because I think the arcade type of setting that we put is attracting the people. And the games are quite fun. Right, and it's a pressure of prepare. Because I guess it's all banks around you guys. So, right? Like, it's the only gaming one. But it's like bringing financial people and the banking sector together. So that's very interesting. I'm very surprised that there's like... Yes, I think you should try out our different games. Oh, great. We'll do that. We'll do that. That's amazing. So what's big next for Anomoca? I think we're still trying to build our different games and trying to push the blockchain industry in general further away. But yeah, trying to focus more on developing our different games for now. That's good. I think that's cool, right? And it's looking fantastic. And I feel like this is quite interesting because I think Hong Kong people, they want to invest in something, right? Like, I see people like so interested. Like, there's so people asking so many questions. And I think that's exciting. So really good job, guys. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, you're getting Hashkey. Hashkey. Let me see if I can... Hi. Michael, nice to meet you. So, Hashkey, you guys are making... Doing the first registered license exchange in Hong Kong. Yes. Can you tell me a little bit about the whole boarding process? So is it open to retail, institutional investors? What's happening here? Yeah, so we are... Now we're open to the retails, the PI professional investors. Right. Investors and institutions. I guess in terms of the coins trading, how many coins you are trading so far? For the retails, we only have two. Two? Yeah. Two! Just retails, yeah. Right. Which ones? Okay, obviously. BTC and Ethereum. Okay. Actually, there are rules from the SFC. Right. How to list the coins to the retails. Right, right, right. So we have three conditions. Right. The first one, this coin has to have 12 months' history in the market. 12 months' history. Okay, right, right. But that's not too bad. That's not too bad. The second one is this coin should be listing them in the main index, such a last stock index and other famous index. You have to be listed on this index. Oh, okay. The reason is this index will evaluate the trading volume, the holders' quantity, and the other factors. Right. Actually, this is mainly to protect the users' retails. Right, right, right. So, yeah, not too many new coins coming in, right, basically. Yeah, the third is they have to prove it by SFC. Right, right, right, right. So I guess in terms of launching the coin, I actually see you guys also have your own hash token on there, is that right? Yeah, we have the HSK. Okay. Actually, it's a token based on Ethereum, but it's different with other tokens because we are not allowed to sell these tokens to the retails. It's mainly for user incentives. So people get it, then what can they do? Can they sell it? Yeah, after we list it, the users can trade it and sell it. Interesting. So that's a very interesting strategy. So you chose to have a token with the exchange. That's actually a very aggressive strategy, too, I kind of find, like, you know. As a company. Yeah, that's actually quite interesting. Can you talk about when you can list the token or how that will work? So we have launched the roadmap yesterday. Okay. So we probably listed this token in next year. Okay, so it will be a year after everything. Yeah. Right, right, right. Got it, got it. So I'm really excited to see what's going to happen and I hope to keep you in touch, Mark. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Cool, cool, cool. That's actually quite interesting because, like, honestly, I didn't expect them to go so aggressive with launching. You know, the first exchange, you know, usually they go through a lot of scrutiny. Yeah. So launching with a token or any form of token will be very, very aggressive, right? Yeah. I feel like that's the aggression coming through. It's the Binance model. Huh? It's the Binance model. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And normally, like, you think about all these big exchanges, right? Like Coinbase, right? Kraken. They usually don't launch with a token, but these guys are going forward. So that's crazy. Is it Michael? Yes, yes. Hi. I think I saw you somewhere before. Probably on YouTube or something. So Toby here, he's from Hashkey. He's in charge of localization. Yeah. So what do you do in localization? Actually, anything that related to the local community. I would try to bring Hashkey to the main public. I mean, outside of the crypto world, but my job is bring it up to the whole Hong Kong investment community and stuff. And what do you think is the kind of the tone right now? Because I mean, okay, infamously, there was JPEGs. It kind of ruined the crypto reputation for a while. But do you think that it's kind of returning? Do you think there's more people coming back? What's happening? I think the main concern is that the market is not being so active, not only the crypto market, but also the traditional investment market. Right. So the people, they're not willing to put money into investment or long term stuff for right now. I think that's one of the reasons we are hard to explore the market. But I believe that once the economic start coming back, like everyone's making money, they're willing to spend. And that's actually quite interesting because I mean, traditionally this conference has been very finance based. Right. I think that's the big banks and everything. Yes. But as you see, most of the interest, the people are flooding into the Web3 stuff, which is actually quite good. Right. And what you're saying is also quite true, right? Like people, they don't want to deploy right now. Yeah. Right. They want to learn. They want to learn. That's why that's what I'm here for. After the FinTech week, most of my work are 80% education. I go to different people and different education centers to partner with them and give them talks about how to enter crypto world safely. Right. What is regulation? Why do we need a regulator and stuff? Okay. Amazing, man. I hope to see you soon. I hope to see you and everything. I'm really excited to see what's happening. Yes. Hey, Kenny. Kenny, how are you, man? Good to see you, man. Yeah. It's been a long time. So we have the legendary poker player, Kenny Shi. Okay. So Kenny, how's it been? We met like literally five years ago. Five girls. Good to see you again. You've been through quite a lot of the Hong Kong regulation. You've been running exchanges. But what's your take right now on the current situation that's happening in Hong Kong? Well, it's awesome that the government, Hong Kong government is really embracing Web3. It's different, right? Because you were trying to do exchanges in Hong Kong prior to this kind of opening up. So it's a very different time. Now it's like, do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say like two, three years back, it was more talk and more kind of trying to figure things out and wait and see approach. Then now I think there's been a lot of resources put into FinTech and also Web3. And I can see by this event, like the people are actually literally going only to the Web3. I think Citigroup and stuff like it's boring. It's like all the Web3 people coming. Sure. Like for instance, like all the cyber port backing, a lot of different Web3 companies. And even like there's like different government funds, like sizable. I've heard like $25 million funds like deployed to the Web3 companies. Things like that nature. That's crazy. So the Asian bulls are coming. Yeah. Absolutely. How's working with institutional people? Because, you know, Hong Kong has traditionally very safe. Like Hong Kong capital has always been very safe and not touching crypto. Do you think it's like it's changing? The tones are changing. You know, in these last three years, all the institutional traders are in crypto, right? I mean, name it like Jane Street Tower, all these like Jump, Jump. Right, right, right, right. They're all in like in some capacity. Some are starting to ramp up a little bit more. But they're definitely from a trading perspective though. And so obviously with what happened with centralized exchanges more recently, you know, FTX, etc. Like they're more, they want to do more things on chain and more, you know, non custodial setup. So that's where we kind of come in. What we're building will disrupt the current TVL of DeFi because. Because it's more money, it's different money coming in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, because like DeFi 2020 was really just crypto people moving their money around, right? And now it's traditional people moving money around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where we're really, really help scale things. Yeah. Got it. Yeah, so. Well, hope to see you soon, man. Do it, man. All right. Awesome to see you. Awesome to see you, man. Cheers. Hey, there's a regulator zone. I have no clue. You want to get an NFT? Can we get an NFT? Yeah, you can. Okay, we scan it and get an NFT. So, I get a free NFT, yeah? Why is the monetary authority issuing out NFTs? Like what's the reasoning behind it? It's not a free thing, the FinTech week, yeah. This is a special edition. Can you sell it? Is it worth one or two years? I don't know. You have to check. Look, this is what it looks like. Oh, hey, that's what it looks like. Cool. What blockchain is on? What blockchain? Polygon. Polygon. Oh, nice. Really? Oh, nice. Really? Oh, nice. Oh, nice. It's interesting because it's a government agency issuing out NFTs. I wouldn't have imagined this in a million years. But Hong Kong Monitor Authority is not like a... I wouldn't view them as super hip or trying to get into this NFT thing. I thought they would be more like, let's just stay with traditional money. Stable. I think it's the concept itself. That regulatory body will need to step into it. Yeah. It's Americans are just like, get the hell out, get the hell out. Yeah. Hong Kong is like, yo, we'll give you NFTs. We'll give you NFTs. We'll give you NFTs. Just come over. Exactly, exactly. So honestly, I really want to wrap this video up and just send it to you guys today because I feel like there's an urgency for you guys to see what is happening already. And also, I was just very surprised that there was so much government work done with blockchain. It's just such a big contrast because what's happening in America is they're just like, no, no blockchain. They're just trying to send this to hell, right? But at the same time, in Asia, it's like the monetary authority itself is issuing out NFTs. You know, this is not like a small government. This is the monetary authority. So I just couldn't have imagined this five, ten years ago where there's just such a strong embracement. And just now we just finished a talk with the transition from Hong Kong NPF. So this is where it's like kind of social security, the fund for social security, the Hong Kong version, that's going to be transitioning onto blockchain, right? I feel like there's just a strong government mandate across the whole of Hong Kong to embrace blockchain. So it's not like a small push. And every single department seems to have to do something related to blockchain, moving their core services or something there. So that's a huge change. And secondly, what's also interesting is embracement of public blockchains. We were discussing a lot earlier that, probably two or three years ago, private blockchains would probably be how government and traditional services are being used. But here you see like Polygon being used. That's crazy. So there's just so much that's being built. And even here you can just see North Bank, ERC20, Coq there. And like this is full embracement of blockchain. And this is like a sign of what's to come. So I'm really excited to share this with you guys today. And really the path, it's really a marathon for this. Like, you know, these institutions, it's not super immediate, but what I see is like, we're laying some crazy foundations for full adoption of blockchain. Or Hong Kong Project, Web 3.0. Michael, what does your path say? Speaker! Also, yeah, I'm speaking here on this stage tomorrow. So we're going to pack this stage back. Please pack this stage tomorrow. The Hong Kong and GPA stage. We're going to panel discussion with, talking about the future of blockchain. So... Hey, let's go to OK. See if they're OK. Hello