Hong Kong has made up its mind to compete with Singapore, London, New York and other cities for the status of global crypto financial center and virtual asset center.
On October 16, Hong Kong Financial Secretary Chen Maobo published an article on the development of innovation and technology in Hong Kong, and pointed out that Hong Kong should be promoted to develop into an international virtual asset center. Chen Maobo said: The policy declaration will clearly express the government’s position, show the global industry our vision to develop Hong Kong into an international virtual asset center, and our commitment and determination to explore financial innovation with the global asset industry.
This also means that Hong Kong will further promote the development of NFT, Web3 and cryptocurrency markets, which are financial innovations and network innovations based on blockchain technology.
Web3 is an Internet ecology based on blockchain technology. It is committed to decentralizing or partially decentralizing the Internet, so that users can have more opportunities to control their own data, assets and digital identities. This new form of digital economy has attracted a lot of investment. According to the latest data from McKinsey, in the first half of 2022, venture capital investment in Web3 exceeded 18 billion US dollars, and the total venture capital investment in 2021 was 32.4 billion US dollars.
Since this year, financial centers in many countries and regions around the world have announced that they will become virtual asset centers, encrypted financial centers, and attract entrepreneurs and companies in this field.
Hong Kong develops web3
At the Hong Kong Fintech Conference at the end of October, some innovations related to web3 will be displayed. Chen Maobo revealed that this year’s Hong Kong Fintech Week will include concepts such as Web3 and the Metaverse, including the use of non-fungible tokens (NFT) A limited-edition Proof of Attendance protocol token will be distributed to participants. Token holders will be able to create an exclusive virtual avatar through 3D scanning at that time to provide visitors with a new experience. They can also use the tokens to participate in other industry events preferentially in the future. This form of issuing NFT participation certificates to participants has become a trend. This certificate often has no entity and is just a network certificate. However, because it is made into NFT, it has the value of collection and transaction. .
Within Asia, cities (countries) that hope to become global encrypted financial centers and virtual asset centers include but are not limited to Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Bangkok, etc.
In May 2022, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the arrival of the Web3 era may lead to (Japan) economic growth. He mentioned that integrating new digital services such as the Metaverse and NFTs will bring economic growth to Japan. As we enter the Web3 era, I feel strongly that we have to push this environment firmly from a political standpoint.
A Tokyo city councilor, Yu Ito, has opened up about plans to transform Tokyo into a crypto-financial center, claiming that embracing crypto assets could help Tokyo compare favorably with London and Hong Kong.
Singapore is often compared with Hong Kong because of the convergence in population, urban area, and financial policies. At the end of September, the Singapore TOKEN 2049 Encryption Conference just ended, attracting 7000+ attendees, 2000+ companies and 250+ sponsors around the world, and hundreds of events were held.