Only by further lowering the barriers to entry of Web3 and allowing more people to understand and use Web3 products, will it be possible to develop a thriving virtual asset industry and ecosystem in Hong Kong.
Recently, Hong Kong Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau released the "Policy Declaration on the Development of Virtual Assets in Hong Kong" at the Hong Kong Financial Technology Week, which has become one of the hottest topics in the Web3 circle recently.
Compared with previous years, this year's Hong Kong Fintech Week has many more Web3 practitioners on the scene, and NFT entrepreneur Fu Rao is one of them.
At the event site, the Hong Kong government issued the Fintech Week NFT for the first time. Fu Rao is the 58th user who received this NFT. According to him, "There were very few people at the scene to claim this NFT. I think only 103 have been taken away so far. There must be thousands of people at the scene."
Judging from the collection of NFTs during the Hong Kong Fintech Week, Fu Rao believes that the speed of the real virtual assets "out of the circle" is far less than the sudden waves caused by a single policy.
"It is estimated that the method of receiving it is a bit cumbersome, and many people don't know how to operate it."
In the view of several Hong Kong Web3 entrepreneurs and practitioners in the dialogue of "Lianxin", only by further lowering the entry threshold of Web3 and allowing more people to understand and use Web3 products, can a vigorous virtual asset industry be developed in Hong Kong and the ecosystem. This is exactly the direction in which practitioners and the Hong Kong government are working together.
Popularization of Web3 in Hong Kong: From celebrities bringing goods to NFT ATM landing
At the beginning of October, not long before Hong Kong issued a virtual asset development policy declaration, Fu Rao had just returned to Hong Kong from the mainland.
In 2017, Fu Rao resigned from a central state-owned enterprise in the Mainland and came to Hong Kong, and began to get in touch with the blockchain industry. From the earliest investment opportunities in various projects such as currency, chain, mine, and exchange, to the establishment of a blockchain think tank research institute Hong Kong International New Economic Research Institute.
In 2019, Fu Rao became the first batch of people to issue NFTs in Hong Kong. One of the important projects was to help Stephen Chow produce NFTs for classic scenes in 12 movies. Later, due to market problems, the project was suspended.
"At that time, there was no term NFT, but it was called ERC-721 and ERC-1155." Fu Rao believes that compared with projects such as CryptoPunks and Boring Ape in Europe and the United States, Hong Kong actually made explorations in NFT very early. In terms of business model innovation, Hong Kong is not far behind.
Due to the epidemic, Fu Rao returned to Shenzhen for two years. This time in Hong Kong, in less than a month, Fu Rao has negotiated with three organizations that are very interested in issuing NFTs, including jewelers, show ticketing and local sports chain brands.
The smooth development of business in Hong Kong has a lot to do with the increasing recognition of NFT among local brands and the public in recent years. NFT is often seen in bus advertisements moving on the street. Pacific Place can directly swipe a credit card to buy NFT. "How much money did you make investing in NFT?"
Fu Rao was deeply touched by this: "When I returned to Hong Kong this time, I found that the small Web3 environment is very active. What everyone is doing is thinking about how to make Web3 more out of the circle, so that non-Web3 users start to become Web3 users."
The formation of the NFT atmosphere in Hong Kong can actually be traced, from Shawn Yue, Edison Chen and many other Hong Kong stars investing in NFTs and broadcasting them in turn on the news media, to Stephen Chow’s recent release on social platforms of "Looking for Distinguished and Outstanding Web3 Talents in the Dark" Recruitment posts, local public figures have played a role in boosting the popularity of new things.
Contributing to the popularization of the NFT concept in Hong Kong is the continuous emergence of NFT ATMs in public places. This is what another Web3 entrepreneur Ricky Lo is doing, that is, how to lower the entry barrier of the Web3 ecology through physical and offline NFT ATMs.
Before entering the Web3 field, Ricky has accumulated 7 or 8 years of entrepreneurial experience in developing mobile payments in Hong Kong. At that time, I taught the cashiers in the store to identify the blue logo as Alipay and the green pattern as WeChat Pay, which laid an important foundation for the transformation of Hong Kong's financial industry to online, and also gave Ricky the inspiration to promote virtual asset trading business offline.
This year's Hong Kong Digital Art Fair will continue to be exhibited from October 20th to November 6th. Ricky's company team Hunter and partner DARTrader moved NFT ATM at the exhibition, making a new attempt for the popularization of Web3 art. During the exhibition, Ricky's team launched NFTs of custom avatars, and distributed more than 1,000 for free in two weeks.
In addition, an NFT called Schoolio, which consigned 1,000 NFTs on NFT ATM, also sold very well, and the sales volume has exceeded half. Schoolio is an NFT jointly launched by an alliance of 7 middle schools in Hong Kong. Graduates of the middle school alliance who purchase this NFT can not only obtain the certification of school graduate status, but also participate in the offline activities and academic activities of the school alliance .
Ricky said that the original intention of developing the offline NFT ATM is not for the old users who are already Web3, but for "novice".
Users who purchase on NFT ATM do not necessarily need a wallet, and can also use their mobile phone number to purchase. After the purchase is completed, the user's mobile phone will receive a text message with a link to the NFT address. The entire process only takes tens of seconds. Greatly lowering the barriers to entry for NFT novices.
At present, such NFT ATMs have been deployed in 30 locations in Hong Kong, including schools, restaurants, bars, shopping malls, and co-creation spaces. The NFT options provided by NFT ATMs in each location will also have a focus.
Traditional financial professionals transition into the encryption circle
One of the conveniences of Ricky's NFT ATM business in Hong Kong is that the establishment of an ATM in Hong Kong is not subject to financial license restrictions.
Looking around the world, Hong Kong is the leading "special talent" in the financial services industry. In the field of traditional finance, the geographic location of Hong Kong, New York, and London just covers the 24-hour trading time around the world, becoming one of the world's three major financial centers and allowing Hong Kong to gather a large number of financial talents.
In 2018, Joey, who has a professional background in statistics, studied in Hong Kong as a graduate student. When I graduated, I had many options for working in the traditional financial field, such as investment banks and brokerages, but Joey finally entered the encryption industry, which was not widely recognized by most of his classmates at the time.
Joey successfully entered a mainstream cryptocurrency exchange to do quantitative trading. Purely from the perspective of secondary market transactions, the traditional financial industry has rules and regulations on the transaction behavior of practitioners, while the encryption industry has given each practitioner more individual opportunities. In addition to enriching his own trading strategies, Joey also came into contact with the fundamentals of the cryptocurrency circle, and began to understand the blockchain and the technology behind various cryptocurrency projects.
Most of Joey’s classmates chose to enter the traditional financial field after graduation. At that time, they didn’t know about cryptocurrencies and were unwilling to take the initiative to understand them, or they kept a wait-and-see attitude. However, after the third halving of Bitcoin, the overall market value of cryptocurrencies continued to hit new highs. Many friends began to consult Joey about investment channels, and even took the initiative to get involved in DEFI. From the perspective of phenomena alone, this industry is gradually being known and accepted by more people. Although some people may only be temporarily fomo, some people have settled down. Overall, Hong Kong people are more open and positive towards cryptocurrencies than before.
Joey said: "Forecasting is an important part of a trader's work, and the industry's forecast also has guiding significance for trading behavior. Generally speaking, the influx of high-tech talents is a positive signal for the development of the industry, and what is currently visible is that the more More and more prestigious school graduates are going to the web3 track."
Hong Kong’s unique advantages in the development of Web3 are not only reflected in the fact that more financial talents are transforming into the encryption industry, but also that the people here have relatively high financial literacy and investment awareness.
Fu Rao said that although the total population of Hong Kong is small, only about 7 million, the value of a single customer is very high.
From the perspective of an ordinary individual investor, the greatest convenience that Joey feels is capital flow, that is, deposits and withdrawals are relatively free. For example, Hong Kong identity can obtain KYC (identity verification) of many encrypted exchanges.
Before the policy declaration on the development of virtual assets came out, Hong Kong’s attitude towards the entire industry was still relatively vague. Many retail investors wanted to participate in virtual currency trading but were afraid of risking breaking the law.
In the NFT ATM launched by Ricky, not only NFT can be traded, but also some mainstream cryptocurrencies can be bought and sold. However, when the government’s attitude is not very clear, Ricky did not vigorously promote cryptocurrency transactions on the NFT ATM for fear of trouble.
Ricky mentioned: "At the beginning of the year, there was news that the Hong Kong government would issue licenses related to virtual currency, but the threshold for license application seemed to be very high. At that time, we did not vigorously promote it according to this news, and even some ATMs directly removed the cryptocurrency trading function from the shelves. gone."
The "Policy Declaration on the Development of Virtual Assets in Hong Kong" mentioned: "We note that global investors (whether institutional or retail) accept virtual assets as an asset that can be allocated for investment. Securities and Futures Commission A public consultation will be launched on the appropriate level of virtual asset trading by retail investors under the new licensing regime."
Ricky believes that the policy declaration is good for retail investors to participate in cryptocurrency transactions, and anyone will have the opportunity to participate in it. This is a necessary measure to lower the threshold of Web3.
Leave Singapore or stay in Hong Kong?
Since the first half of this year, five or six colleagues around Joey have gone to work in Singapore. Some colleagues work in Web3 organizations with a global layout, because their positions were transferred to Singapore, and some were because the organization itself moved overseas.
The exchange platform where Joey works is currently recruiting people on a large scale in Southeast Asian countries. Singapore and Thailand have successively introduced some favorable policies for the encryption industry. In addition, the labor costs in many Southeast Asian countries are lower, which directly constitutes a positive impact on the development of the encryption industry in Hong Kong. threaten. Therefore, she believes that the policy declaration launched by the Hong Kong government this time may also be a remedial measure for the outflow of capital and talents during this period.
Joey does not rule out the possibility of going to other countries or regions to engage in Web3. Although the policy issued by Hong Kong is quite strong in terms of statement, it remains to be seen how the specific implementation will be.
Joey has always felt that the encryption circle in Hong Kong has a "lukewarm" climate - this is not the most eye-catching center in the global circle, but there are also a group of people who have been doing things.
In fact, Tether, the parent company of USDT, the world’s largest stable currency by market value, and well-known exchanges Bitfinix and FTX, many giant projects in the encryption field started in Hong Kong. In recent years, many new blocks have been born in Hong Kong. Blockchain start-ups and crypto investment institutions. All these prove that Hong Kong has the potential to incubate Web3.
Joey will stay in Hong Kong for a while, and may consider changing places later. "I am long-term optimistic about the entire encryption industry, but I am open to location."
Ricky also felt that more and more friends around him went overseas for development in the past two years, some went to Singapore, Dubai, and some went to third world countries. Ricky believes that in the past year, Hong Kong’s policy attitude was relatively vague, while Singapore gave a clear positive signal half a year earlier than Hong Kong. This has indeed attracted a wave of people, but the epidemic is also a very important reason. If it is opened, there is no need for isolation or wearing a mask, so it is not entirely the effect of policy "gravitational waves".
Ricky will choose to base himself in Hong Kong before expanding his business overseas. At present, NFT ATMs are not only launched in Hong Kong, but also have some partners in Cambodia, Laos and other Southeast Asian countries and Europe. The key tasks for next year include cooperation with the Cambodian consulate to launch NFT ATMs in local tourist attractions.
In the past two years, Fu Rao has often traveled between Hong Kong and Singapore. He feels that the flow between the two places is very frequent and normal, and Hong Kong has more than Singapore in terms of the number of listed companies and capital activity. The advantages.
"Maybe the TOKEN2049 conference was held in September, which attracted a group of people from all over the world to Singapore, but whether the capital can be retained is another matter. Everyone went there to open an office. I feel that in this wave Probably the most profitable ones are local real estate agents, headhunters and accountants and lawyers.”
On October 31, the day when Hong Kong released the virtual asset development policy declaration, Fu Rao participated in an online event on the interpretation of Hong Kong’s heavy encryption new policy. Sun Yuchen stated at the event that after the policy was released, he would return to Hong Kong from Singapore . "I don't know if he is serious, but he did make such a statement."