Web3 fest draws smaller crowd but greater interest
Attendance is down, but enthusiasm is up at Hong Kong’s Web3 Festival this year amid sky-high bitcoin prices that have helped draw in an even greater proportion of overseas participants compared with last year.
The vast majority of participants – an estimated 80 per cent – came from outside the city, Deputy Financial Secretary Michael Wong Wai-lun said in his opening remarks.
The 2024 conference has seen more exhibitors from Europe and the United States specifically, according to Lu Weiding, CEO of Wanxiang Group, which owns event organiser HashKey Group.
As Hong Kong forges ahead with its push to transform into a major cryptocurrency hub, it has been attracting more Web3 events and trying to bring in big-name speakers.
Investor Cathie Wood, founder of US fund manager ARK Invest, was the most high-profile speaker at this year’s Web3 Festival, although she dialled in remotely for a video chat. She praised Hong Kong’s regulatory efforts and said the United States was lagging behind.
“We are very impressed with what [Hong Kong] has done in providing a comprehensive regulatory framework for exchanges and institutions from a custody point of view,” Wood said in an onstage interview with HashKey Capital. “This regulatory clarity is critical to enabling the proliferation of the technology faster perhaps in Hong Kong than in the United States.”
Wood encouraged businesses in Hong Kong to take advantage of the existing regulatory arbitrage as a “global opportunity”.
She also predicted the price of bitcoin would hit US$1.5 million by 2030. After reaching a record of more than US$73,000 on March 13, it now sits at about US$68,000.
This year’s Web3 Festival started shortly after the conclusion of the WOW Summit and the Liquidity 2024 Institutional Digital Asset Summit, which both dealt with cryptocurrency-related topics.
More events are planned for later this year. May will see both the Wiki Finance Expo and Bitcoin Asia, and Chainlink will host its SmartCon event in Hong Kong in October. CoinDesk, recently acquired by cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, which has strong ties to the city, will bring its major Consensus conference to Hong Kong next year.
Still, the flood of events risks dividing attention, especially with so many other major ones taking place elsewhere.
Token2049, which holds its flagship event in Singapore and once took place in Hong Kong, is hosting its Dubai conference in two weeks. The Paris Blockchain Week is also being held this week, while ETH Seoul was held on the last three days of March.
With other events clustered so closely together, the Web3 Festival was smaller in scale than last year, which happened a few months after Hong Kong announced its big cryptocurrency push.
This year’s event covers less space in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and has fewer exhibitors, according to HashKey Exchange CEO Livio Weng. But it had more sponsorship revenue than last year, and there were more side events, he said.
Hong Kong has maintained its commitment to trying to draw the cryptocurrency industry to the city after a number of high-profile scandals and collapses in 2022 and 2023.
A mandatory licensing scheme, which took effect last year with the aim of providing regulatory clarity to make the market more attractive, has drawn 24 applicants so far.
The city is also moving to regulate stablecoins and overthe-counter cryptocurrency shops. Many are also expecting the approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
“Hong Kong remains the most exciting global opportunity for a firm wanting to build a virtual asset business or invest in virtual assets,” said Sean Lawrence, head of Asia-Pacific at cryptocurrency data provider Kaiko.
The city’s advantages included supportive and clear policy directives, a talent pool with experience in traditional finance, and capital to be allocated to virtual assets, he said.