HONG KONG – The first day of Consensus Hong Kong concluded with the promise of new financial products linked to cryptocurrencies in the Special Administrative Region of China.
Hong Kong’s chief executive and financial secretary and the chief executive of the Securities and Futures Commission laid out their priorities for regulation, saying Hong Kong would begin issuing stablecoin licenses next month, publish a framework for perpetual contracts and otherwise work to develop the local crypto economy.
Finance Secretary Paul Chan said he sees AI as one of the few trends maturing at this stage: “As AI agents become capable of making and executing decisions independently, we may begin to see the first forms of what some call the machine economy, where AI agents can hold and transfer digital assets, pay for services, and transact with each other on-chain.”
Skybridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci said he would stick with the prediction that bitcoin would reach $150,000, which points to legislation that is being negotiated in the US.
“I think once that legislation is passed, it will open a floodgate of activity in the monetary center, the banks in the United States,” he said. “If we are only in the four-year cycle, then bitcoin will start to rise at the end of the year, starting in the fourth quarter.”
Consensys’ Joe Lubin said Ethereum is antifragile, which is important for a decentralized foundation that can support greater decentralized finance (DeFi), which in turn would allow developers to “build and restructure the world’s systems essentially on stronger financial and trust foundations.”
“DeFi is about as secure as traditional finance,” he said.
Nigel Feetham, Minister of Justice, Trade and Industry of Gibraltar, said that smaller jurisdictions regulating cryptocurrencies are focused on ensuring the security and integrity of the market.
“We are jealous of protecting our reputation because all it takes is one market failure, if I can put it that way, and clearly everyone is harmed by that. Once you are licensed in a jurisdiction, you become an interested party and therefore we have an obligation to ensure that we take care of all our stakeholders.”
The recent market action also attracted the attention of the speakers.
Bitmine’s Tom Lee, whose company has an unrealized loss of almost $8 billion through its ether holdings, said people “should think about opportunities here instead of selling.”
“Gold is a meme,” said Jordi Alexander of Selini.
The final day of Consensus will feature panels focused on scaling the Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana blockchains with a keynote by Zak Folkman of World Liberty Financial and a fireside conversation with Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority Chairman Bilal Bin Saqib.
