Starting the Year Right! HashKey Engages with Major Digital Asset Industry Events 

2 weeks into the new year, while the crypto markets might be still in the doldrums, the passion and energy within the digial asset community have remained unwavering, as evident by the flurrry of industry events as well as blockchain and Web3-related conferences and summits so far across the APAC region.

Dr. Xiao Feng (left), Chairman of HashKey Group, and Dr. David Zou (right), HashKey's Chief Economist, have been invited to speak at this year’s Asian Financial Forum (January 11-12). Dr. Xiao spoke about the future of virtual asset development in Hong Kong and how local FinTech start-ups can take advantage of the new regulatory regime. 

Hong Kong Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Outlook

Digital economy has become the focus of technology and economy innovation in recent years. Dr. Xiao believes that in this new model, "usage right" will become more significant and valuable than ownership right. Under this trend, the industry needs tokenisation technology to achieve standardisation, quantisation and financialisation in digital asset usage rights.

Dr. Xiao expects to see an explosive growth in Web3 applications in the next two to three years. The major opportunity lies in the digital-native technology innovation. In particular, Dr. Xiao is bullish on the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC). For products created by AIGC, blockchain technology can provide the ideal system for property right registration, trading and settlements. This opens the door for applications beyond our imagination - tokenization technology will be the backbone supporting these applications.

On Hong Kong’s digital asset market, Dr. Xiao believes it will be another core drivers of the city’s financial industry. The stock market remains as the key pillar of Hong Kong, sustaining the city’s status as international financial centre. As the digital asset market grows and thrives, it will drive Hong Kong in its transformation to the “international financial centre 2.0”.

Latest Development of China's Digital Currency e-CNY

Dr. David Zou, HashKey's Chief Economist, recently joined a webinar China’s digital currency e-CNY hosted by Chinese financial media Yicai. During the webinar, Dr. Zou shared his insights on the latest development and applications of the e-CNY.

China’s central bank is accelerating in developing digital yuan (e-CNY), leading in the race of central bank digital currency (CBDC). Regarding this, Dr. Zou said it will take time for the public to get used to the new payment tool. Every new currency and payment tool must rely on network effects to grow and expand. Dr. Zou believes in order to boost mainstream adoption, the digital yuan will need more applications and use cases.

China’s digital yuan has its unique advantages in cross-border payments. The existing cross-border payment process involves multiple banks and institutions. This adds to the cost for cross-border payments. Dr. Zou believes the multilateral bridge of CBDC can be a key prospect with massive potential, especially in commodity trading and cross-border financial asset transfers.

Mainland China and Hong Kong has engaged in collaborations of cross-border payments using digital yuan. While we can boost cross-border payments at the wholesale level, Dr. Zou suggested to have careful study on the retail payment use case.  A large-scale circulation of digital yuan in Hong Kong’s retail market would bring comprehensive impacts on China’s currency circulation.

The senior team at HashKey Capital has been also among the keynote speakers at recent industry conferences and events. HashKey Capital’s Investment Director Sunny He Yang spoke at Alibaba Cloud’s Web3 Summit (January 9) in Singapore, where she shared how blockchain and crypto technology have continued to break new grounds in spite of the market turbulence.

Capital's Research Director Jupiter Zheng was invited by Cyberport Hong Kong and Marsbit to moderate a panel discussion at the inaugural POW'ER 2023 Hong Kong Web3 Innovator Summit (January 9-10). He was joined by panellists from Aptos, Ava Labs and Conflux Network, where they talked about the future of Ethereum and new public chain opportunities.