HONG KONG — Consensus Hong Kong’s first day ended with the promise of new financial products linked to crypto in the special administrative region of China.
Hong Kong’s chief executive and secretary of finance and executive director of the Securities and Futures Commission all laid out their priorities for regulation, saying Hong Kong would start issuing stablecoin licenses next month, publish a framework for perpetual contracts and otherwise work to develop the local crypto-economy.
Finance Minister Paul Chan said he sees AI as one of a handful of trends maturing at this stage: “As AI agents become able to make and execute decisions independently of it, we may begin to see the early forms of what some call the machine economy, where AI agents can hold and transfer digital assets, pay for services and trade with each other on the chain.”
Skybridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci said he would stick with a prediction that bitcoin would hit $150,000, pointing to legislation under negotiation in the US
“I think once that legislation is passed, it will open a floodgate of activity in the money center, banks in the United States,” he said. “If we’re only in the four-year cycle, then bitcoin will start to rise again at the end of the year, starting in the fourth quarter.”
Consensys’ Joe Lubin said Ethereum is anti-fragile, which is important for a decentralized foundation that can support further decentralized finance (DeFi), which in turn would let developers “build, essentially rebuild the world’s systems on sounder economic and trust-based foundations.”
“DeFi is about as secure as traditional finance,” he said.
Nigel Feetham, Gibraltar’s Minister for Justice, Trade and Industry, said that smaller jurisdictions that regulate crypto are focused on ensuring the safety and integrity of the market.
“We’re jealous of our reputation because all it takes is one market failure, if I may say so, and obviously everybody gets hurt. Once you’re licensed in a jurisdiction, you become a stakeholder, and so we have an obligation to make sure we look after all our stakeholders.”
The latest market action also attracted the attention of the speakers.
Bitmine’s Tom Lee, whose company is sitting on a nearly $8 billion unrealized loss through its ether holdings, said people “should think about opportunities here instead of selling.”
“Gold is a meme,” said Selini’s Jordi Alexander.
Consensus’ final day will see panels focused on scaling the Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana blockchains with a keynote by World Liberty Financial’s Zak Folkman and a fireside chat with the chairman of Pakistan’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, Bilal Bin Saqib.
