The global blockchain community descended on Hong Kong Tuesday as NexChange kicked off its annual Hong Kong Blockchain Week.
Hong Kong Blockchain Week is a five-day event which focuses on the latest developments and insights into the ever-evolving, real-world applications of blockchain technology. It features over 175 speakers from blockchain’s most illustrious companies, and consequently, is slated to become Hong Kong’s largest blockchain event.
Opening the festivities was NexChange Group founder and CEO Juwan Lee. Lee spoke about Hong Kong’s blockchain ecosystem and its trends, underlining that the Hong Kong market “is uniquely positioned” to be prime blockchain tech real estate “because it’s a financial hub and part of the Greater Bay Area.”
Lee was followed by True Global Ventures founder Dusan Stojanovic. The venture capital vet talked about the future of finance and how it will be impacted by blockchain. However, Stojanovic did have some thoughts about Silicon Valley’s unicorns:
“Until today 80% of the tech unicorns are in the San Francisco area. It is a highly concentrated world which is about to burst. So the solution is a decentralized world.”
Former CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton was next and as always, the man’s presentation was lively to say the very least. In a talked titled “Blockchain Dreamers & the Properties of Bamboo,” Chilton outlined the various potential applications for blockchain “for the dreamers,” and compared it – and the regulations surrounding it – to bamboo:
“I’m a fan of this bamboo approach, not strict rules, just guidelines….We need to find the right climate and regulatory system, that allows block and cryptos to flourish and grow like bamboo. And principles-based regulation – in my view – that’s a key component of it.”
Matt Chwierut, research director at Smith + Crown, took the stage later in the day to talk about cryptoeconomic design, a subject, he feels, that has lost its way:
“We think Cryptoeconomics design–developing distributed incentive systems enforceable by participants–is the beating heart of the entire project of distributed systems, and we think that over the past two years, it has lost its way.”
“ICOs stole the narrative for cryptoeconomic design but this idea predates ICOs quite significantly. Before this, people were forking codebases and launching what were then called “altcoins,” intended to imrpove on Bitcoin or serve totally different purposes. Cryptoeconomic design had a history before ICOs and it will have a future beyond it.”
“Bitcoin is the biggest proof that cryptoeconomic design works. We estimate that over $6 billion worth of hardware has been deployed historically to help secure the chain. Bitcoin didn’t employ them, there are no legal contracts between them. All this for a set of distributed incentives in a computer program.”
Day one was also littered with panels from the Big Stage and the Open Stage. Angie Lau, co-founder of Forkast.news, moderated one on government and blockchain with Charles Mok, legislator at the Legislative Council of Hong Kong; Benedicte Nolens, head of Regulatory Affairs for Asia and Europe & CCO for Asia at Circle; and Rocky Mui, consultant at Clifford Chance. Lau highlighted the significance of the rule of law, saying that “there are many good and unfortunately also bad actors in blockchain technology,” and adding that “providing regulators legislation makes it safer for the individual participant.” Mui said that Hong Kong’s legislators are doing a lot in regards to blockchain, continuing that it’s “a good thing.” Nolens meanwhile noted that regulatory intelligibility is of greater import:
“The most important thing is the distinction between regulations and regulatory clarity.”
Over on the Digital Asset Management panel, Jason Hu, WDAO China Director-General Jason Hu, Asia Blockchain Society Founding President Dr. Cheney Tsoi, and C Block Capital Chairman Bing Lin talked about the “Trends we need to know.” Moderated by ACMI Founder Brian Tang, the panel saw Tsoi say that cryptos are getting a little too frothy:
“Security tokens are very popular now, but I believe that they are too “hot.”
Hu meanwhile had this to say about stablecoins:
“If you want to create a stablecoin, you need a good ecosystem.”
Wrapping up the day was Fintech O2O, an event moderated by Charles D’Haussy, director of Strategic Initiatives at ConsenSys Hong Kong and paneled by Lisa O’Connor, managing director for Securities, Treasury and Standards, Asia Pacific at SWIFT, Dušan Stojanović, founder and director of True Global Ventures, and Brian Lio, CEO of Smith + Crown.
Day two
Much like day one, day two was chock-full of blockchain heavies, with Carylyne Chen, global head of Marketing at CoinMarketCap, starting the day on the Big Stage with a presentation on the global blockchain landscape.
Chen was followed by Crypto Law Partners Founding Partner Gordon Einstein, who led a panel on international and global trends in blockchain with Comply Now Founder Cecillia Chen, DECENT CEO Matej Michalko, and Futurama Blockchain Innovators co-founder Joshua Hong. Michalko provided his thoughts on the industry for 2019, adding that it’ll be the year of integration and that we’ll be seeing more commercial MVPs.
Over on the open stage, AgriLedger CEO Genevieve Leveille headed a panel on securities offerings, regulations, and compliance. It featured Sandra Wu, founding partner at Origin x Capital, Urszula McCormack, Financial Regulatory & Emerging Technology partner at King & Wood Mallesons, Mun Shing Cheong, managing director at C Block Capital, and Elizabeth Yeung, co-founder of the BrX Exchange.
Another interesting panel was on the fintech competition between Hong Kong and Singapore. Moderated by Schulte Consulting CEO Paul Schulte and discussed by Investa Co-Founder Alice Chen, Consensys Hong Kong Director of Strategic Initiatives Charles D’Haussy, and Singapore Fintech Association President Chia Hock Lai, the panel explored the differences between the Pearl of the Orient and the Lion City in blockchain finance initiatives, the role of government, schooling, entrepreneurship, and China.
Day two also saw Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser. Kaiser, who co-founded of the Digital Asset Trade Association (DATA), told the audience that if “you want your data protected, you have to have legal recourse.”
Yat Sui, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, was also at the event and he spoke about non-fungible tokens and how they’ll make content “king” again. The BAFTA advisory board member and former Atari employee had this to say about Hong Kong Blockchain Week:
“Decentralization will soon be the normal way to do all sorts of business, and blockchain represents the inevitable future for various industries including finance, gaming, and medicine, among others. Hong Kong Blockchain Week has brought together many of the visionaries and technologists from all over the world who are catapulting us toward this distributed future.”
Taking the stage later in the day was GanaEightCoin COO Juliet Adelstein. Adelstein talked about evolution of gaming into blockchain, saying that “the iGaming world and the blockchain world are a match made in heaven” and that it was “one of those few circumstances in life where each gives more to the other industry than taking away from it.”
She went on to detail the multiple advantages of blockchain for iGaming players, adding that “while this sounds fantastic for the players, think about what this means for operators and platforms themselves. An operator, with an iGaming solution on a blockchain platform, all of a sudden has a product completely different in a sea of wildly repetitive, indistinguishable clones.”
Capping the day was a panel called Borderless Technology: Where AI meets Blockchain. It was headed by CUHK Business School Associate Professor Dr. Toa Charm and featured iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer author Dr. Gina Smith.