Hong Kong strives to become a global virtual asset center

Hong Kong is making every effort to compete with cities like Singapore, London, and New York for a leading position as a global hub for cryptocurrency finance and virtual assets.

Recently, the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, Paul Chan, published an article emphasizing the need to promote Hong Kong's development as an international virtual asset center. He stated that the government will clearly express its position, showcasing Hong Kong's development vision in this field to the global industry, as well as its determination to explore financial innovation together with the global asset industry.

This means that Hong Kong will further promote the development of the NFT, Web3, and cryptocurrency markets. These areas are all financial and network innovations based on blockchain technology. Web3, as a blockchain-based internet ecosystem, is committed to achieving decentralization or partial decentralization of the internet, allowing users to better control their data, assets, and digital identities. This emerging form of the digital economy has attracted a large amount of investment. According to McKinsey, in the first half of 2022, venture capital investment in Web3 exceeded $18 billion, and in the entire year of 2021, it reached as high as $32.4 billion.

Since the beginning of this year, financial centers in multiple countries and regions around the world have announced their intentions to become virtual asset hubs and crypto finance centers, attracting entrepreneurs and companies in related fields. At the upcoming Hong Kong FinTech Conference, some Web3-related innovations will be showcased. Chen Maobo revealed that this year's Hong Kong FinTech Week will incorporate concepts such as Web3 and the metaverse, including the issuance of limited edition attendance proof tokens in the form of NFTs to participants. Holders can create exclusive virtual avatars through 3D scanning, experiencing a new way of attending the conference, and in the future, they will be able to use the tokens to gain priority access to other industry events.

In the Asian region, cities such as Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, and Bangkok aspire to become global hubs for crypto finance and virtual assets. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has stated that the arrival of the Web3 era could drive Japan's economic growth. He emphasized that integrating new digital services such as the metaverse and NFTs will bring economic opportunities to Japan.

Singapore is often compared to Hong Kong due to its similarities in population, city size, and financial policies. Recently, Singapore just hosted the "TOKEN 2049" crypto conference, attracting over 7,000 participants, more than 2,000 companies, and over 250 sponsors, with hundreds of events taking place.

According to the "2022 Global Blockchain Talent Report - Web 3.0 Direction" jointly released by a data asset trading site and a recruitment platform, as of June 2022, the United States, India, China, the United Kingdom, and Singapore are the top five countries for blockchain talent worldwide. Among them, Singapore has a relatively fast growth rate for talent.

Outside of Asia, some cities in the UK and the US are also actively making arrangements. The UK government has announced plans to make the UK a global center for crypto asset technology and is collaborating with the Royal Mint to develop NFTs. In the US, the mayor of Miami has proposed turning the city into the new Silicon Valley for Web3, while the mayor of New York hopes to make New York a hub for cryptocurrency and other financial innovations.

Financial technology is a strong suit of Hong Kong. Currently, Hong Kong has over 600 fintech companies, with businesses covering areas such as mobile payments, cross-border wealth management, and virtual asset trading, accumulating substantial strength in fintech. Since the beginning of this year, several officials from the Hong Kong government have frequently spoken out, seeking to develop the cryptocurrency finance and digital asset industry.

However, Hong Kong's Web3 development still faces many challenges. In terms of policy openness, Hong Kong lags behind Singapore and South Korea; in terms of the reserve of technical talent, Hong Kong is not as strong as first-tier cities in mainland China; in terms of the number of Web3 companies, Hong Kong is far fewer than New York and Silicon Valley in the U.S. How to achieve differentiated competition with other global financial centers in the field of crypto finance and find the most suitable development path for itself has become an important issue that the Hong Kong financial industry is deeply contemplating.