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- [00:08]
A
We all want to believe in something. In Chinese, belief also means trust. We want to trust our systems and each other so we can build a future beyond what we know. Join us at Consensus Hong Kong, where belief becomes real.
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Hello and welcome to this special edition of Markets Daily, hosted by me, Jen Senassi. On this show, we navigate the currents shaping the crypto markets, providing insights against the broader financial landscape. And I am very excited for this episode because we are here in our New York office with the chairman of Consensus Hong Kong, Michael Lau. Michael, I'm very excited to have you here. Today we are talking about Hong Kong. We are going to be there in one month from now. Let's just level set here. Talk to me about what's going on in Hong Kong from a crypto perspective.
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A
Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much for having me, by the way. So Hong Kong 2 years ago kind of made this whole thing about wanting to become a web3 hub. And it's been kind of interesting. 2024 was really a key year for, you know, developing that whole promise of being a Web3 hub. Part of that kind of took three forms, I guess you could say. One was actually getting to a place where you've got licensed exchanges. And so we've now gotten a number of people over there who've received licenses. And you know, the idea of having regulatory clarity has been very key to getting, getting people to adopt digital assets. And I think that's been one of the things that has been really pushing forward in terms of like the government and the regulators over there. So that's been very exciting. Together with that has been also the fact that in Hong Kong they were one of the first to issue both a bitcoin and an ETH etf. And so there's just more, I guess, vehicles for adoption in Hong Kong that are coming through. And the last thing that happened last year was also the hk, which is the regulator over there for a lot of the banks and a lot of the payments, etc, also announced that they're going to be starting to roll out regime for stablecoins for Hong Kong dollar stablecoin. And so there's been a lot of really great momentum and a lot of great direction that the industry is moving forward to. And so 2025 is kind of the year where all of that's starting to come together. Right. Particularly as we're starting to see the markets come back at a more kind of macro level, you're starting to see the interest rise. You know, the question is whether or not this infrastructure or this you know, kind of jurisdictional, kind of. What's the right word? The ability for, for people to have rules and have the right regulatory kind of framework to approach it. Does that actually increase the amount of adoption in this space? I think that's a pretty pivotal year in 2025 for, for Hong Kong.
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B
Okay, you touched on a lot there. Stablecoins, regulation, regulated crypto exchanges. For me, when I think about Hong Kong, I think about the progress that's been made on the culture side. For example, Yu is based in Hong Kong. There's been a lot of progress of web3 gaming. What would you say the main narrative is heading to 2025 and you look at Hong Kong, is it institutional, is it stablecoins? Like you said, is it Web3 gaming? Is it a mixed. Ask it?
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A
Yeah. So I think one of the most unique things about Hong Kong is that it is been established to be one of the global financial hubs. And the fact that there's so much capital that's going through Hong Kong, whether that's in equities or fixed income or you know, more of the traditional markets, this idea of having, you know, crypto markets and traditional markets converging, I think Hong Kong puts itself as a really, really interesting place to see that dynamic happen. Because again, if you think about, you know, the infrastructure, the technology that enables for it, you still need to have the capital for that too to be of any significance. And that's where in Hong Kong all three of those elements come together. And so this year I think one of the very interesting pieces will be, well, how does that convergence start to happen? I think a lot of it is led institutionally, but I do think that, you know, there's a lot of other components as well. You know, you mentioned, for example, some of the builders that we have in Hong Kong. I think a lot of people have probably been focused elsewhere over the last couple of years as to what's happening in Asia and what's been building out there. What I'm hoping that we kind of uncover a little bit more, you know, what are the interesting projects that people building that's outside of finance as well that are based in Hong Kong? And is there a resurgence, for example, now that hey, like we've got this like really interesting, I guess, tailwind from the macro markets, from general interest in this space. Does that actually move Hong Kong to be both finance and a non finance related hub for Web3?
- [04:38]
B
Now I want to talk about consensus in just a minute. So I don't want to spend too much Time on this. But for our audience who's just starting to learn about Hong Kong, I know that you've been based there for the last 16 years. Has it always been so open and friendly to innovative technology like Web3, or was there a pivotal moment that's really kind of opened up the waters for Web3 to flourish and grow? Grow there?
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A
Yeah. In Hong Kong, actually, there's a lot of history with regards to web3 in the crypto world. A lot of some of the world's largest players actually originated from Hong Kong. But what I think happened was, you know, particularly when we had, you know, Covid a lot of those restrictions that came from that started pushing people outside of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a little bit slower than the rest of the world in terms of reopening. And so a lot of businesses that were needing to kind of reevaluate how they're thinking about the location strategy in Asia actually moved over to Singapore. And what we're seeing is that, you know, as Hong Kong reopened, the rest of the world had already started moving on already. And so there's a little bit of a catch up that's happening. But I think the idea here is that it's not something that Hong Kong's never had before in terms of being a hub, being a place where a lot of really innovative companies have originated from. It's just a question of is it coming back? And I think the idea is that, you know, we are starting to see that momentum. We're starting to see a lot of effort, both public as well as private, to move in that direction. But it has been like a pretty interesting dynamic over the last couple of years. And this is kind of one of those moments where, you know, Hong Kong can, I think, move forward in this. But it does take a little bit of push. And I think that's probably part of the reason why we decided, hey, consensus happening in Hong Kong is a really interesting opportunity for this year.
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B
Let's talk about consensus happening in Hong Kong. This is the first time that consensus has gone outside of the United States borders all the way over to Hong Kong. Talk to me about what we can expect from the event.
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A
Yeah, so when we started planning this, I kind of set out a three part vision to what we wanted to try to achieve with Consensus Hong Kong. The first part of it was this idea of maintaining that consensus brand of high quality content at scale. And so, you know, with, you know, the thousands of people that we're planning to have attend, the idea was to make sure that we're stacking up the speakers such in a way that it's really representing the most senior folks within the region as well as globally that care and have something influential to say about the subject. So, for example, at this point in time, we've already announced over 120 speakers, of which over a hundred of them are in fact of that CEO, founder, C suite, president level. The second part of this vision was, hey, Hong Kong's got this unique location where it's kind of within four hours flight distance from almost the entire region. So from the north you've got Korea, Japan and South you've got, you know, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore. All of that's actually within equidistance to fly into Hong Kong. And so I thought, hey, this would be a great opportunity to really spend a bit of time to uncover what are the most interesting trends and dynamics of the ecosystems happening in those different countries and bring them to Hong Kong. And so what we've been saying is making Hong Kong a gateway to Asia and giving you that understanding some substantive insight as to what's going on in Asia across these different local markets. And the third part of it is a little bit more closer to home for me, which is really only, I think there's a, a secret personal mission here to get people to fall in love with Hong Kong and move there. But the idea was not only showing, showcasing the industry, but also how do we think about the city and all it has to offer and really integrating the conference experience. And so, for example, two examples I can think of. One is we've partnered with Cathay Pacific as our official airline partner. It's our homegrown carrier. We just thought, hey, if people are flying in, let's make sure that, you know, we give them some discounts to be able to fly in. So if you get a ticket, you get a discount code for using cafe. But the second part of it is also the first full day of our conference. It happens on a Wednesday and in Hong Kong every Wednesday there is this really cool thing which is a horse race that happens in the middle of the island. And usually there's people that go to this thing. I thought, hey, this is an iconically Hong Kong experience. Why don't we make it an official part of the consensus conference? And so we announced that we're the first ever Web3 cup race sponsor with the Jockey Club and we're going to be hosting our official Wednesday night program at the Happy Valley races. And so that's also another really cool thing which is getting people to go around the city to see what it has to offer. Really baking in those iconic experiences in Hong Kong. So that's what we're hoping to deliver. And I'm just extremely excited that we're going to have people flying in for this.
- [09:30]
B
I am so happy I got to hear what your real motivation is behind Consensus. Hong Kong is getting everyone to move there. And I've been to Happy Valley. It is so cool. I didn't know that that was going to be a part of Consensus this year. That's super awesome. And I know that all those folks who are into crypto are going to love going down and maybe betting on some horses. It feeds the personality. Right? Okay. If I think back to Consensus Austin. Right. The theme was really regulation and policy. A lot of the conversations that were had there were about regulation and policy very focused on the United States. When you think about some of those guests that you were just alluding to that have already signed on to speak at Consensus, what are some of the narratives and themes that you see coming out of the content that's been curated?
- [10:17]
A
Yeah. So in terms of the macro themes that are happening, I think one, a lot of people coming over to understand what is happening in Asia, what is happening, for example, with regards to some of the bigger markets and bigger countries that are working on this stuff, and that's what we hope to deliver, is this really deep insight as to what's happening. What are we thinking about when it comes to the adoption of blockchain technology in places like China, or, for example, big financial markets like Japan and Hong Kong and Singapore, you know, what are people doing in this space? So Asia is certainly a big thematic. I think a lot of what's been happening in the space globally has been US Driven. So we do have a number of folks flying in from America that are, you know, really ingrained with what's going on in the industry here and also making sure that the context is there in terms of what's happening, because it does have a ripple effect. I think what's interesting is what happens in the US Oftentimes ends up being or ends up resulting in both kind of air cover as well as this idea of, you know, I guess, competitive pressure that provides jurisdictions to say, hey, this is something that I should move forward with. And I think that's going to be quite interesting thematic. I also think that, you know, there's some really big trends right now with regards to AI and convergence to crypto that's going to be explored. And I think finally, you know, there's There's a lot of this, I guess, going back to the idea of capital and Hong Kong being this financial hub and how we're seeing those two tradfine crypto markets converge together. So those are some of the big things that we're looking at.
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B
If you had to pick, I won't say one because I don't want to single one person out. If you had to pick maybe a handful or a couple of speakers that you're really looking forward to, talk to me about who those people are.
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A
Oh, it's too difficult to pick. I mean, I just mentioned there's like over 100 founders and CEOs. Look, I think that there's, it's certainly the thematics, right? I think what we're trying to do here is really curate the right people and the right experts to talk about things. One thing I've really tried hard to do is, you know, many places, what they'll do with panels is they'll say, hey, we've got the expert, you know, trader from this company here to talk about markets. No, actually, why don't I get the CEO or founder of one of those leading companies that do trading to speak about this? And I think that's where it's quite exciting is you're getting the most senior people who are leaders in their field talking about these subjects or talking about these particular, you know, discussions. So, like, that's what I'm quite excited about is the types of people, the seniority of people that we're getting there, but also the fact that, you know, we are carefully curating kind of the discussions that we think are the most pressing topics. So it's, it's too hard for me to name them because I'm going to say one and then say later, oh, shoot, I was actually thinking about somebody else as well. But I mean, that's kind of the beauty of it is that we've got a really, really great roster for this year.
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B
All right. And just before we wrap up here, sell it a little bit for me. If we had to pick one conference in that part of the world to attend in 2025, why is this the one? When we look at all of the other conferences and events that are popping up in the Asian region.
- [13:23]
A
Yeah, I think I really have to go back to that whole idea of that three part vision. I don't think anybody is anywhere close to fulfilling those three things. And so if you care about high quality curation of content, if you care about understanding what's happening in Asia, and you want to have it in a place where not only is it just a great place to do business, but a great place to just spend a week to actually explore a cool destination. There's no other place that's doing. That's why I consist of Hong Kong is a must attend conference for this year.
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B
All right, Michael, thank you so much for joining me here in New York. And the next time I see you, we're going to be in Hong Kong, hopefully at Happy Valley.
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A
Sounds great. Thank you so much for having me.
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B
And thank you to our audience for watching this episode of Markets Daily. If you enjoy listening to this show, subscribe to the Coindesk Podcast network that is available on all podcast platforms. If you prefer watching, we are on YouTube. Hit subscribe, give us a thumbs up and we'll see you tomorrow.