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Matt Haldane

At SmartCon 2024, one of the major Web3 conferences the Hong Kong government courted to the city this year, companies made their pitch for integrating blockchain into the global financial plumbing amid rising geopolitical risks.
Event organiser Chainlink, a blockchain infrastructure firm, said 2,000 people attended the two-day conference that kicked off at Kerry Hotel in Hung Hom on Wednesday. SmartCon is larger this year than in the past, according to the company.
Joseph Chan Ho-lim, under secretary for financial services and the treasury, gave opening remarks to kick off the event, highlighting Hong Kong’s role as a virtual-asset hub even as some of the momentum in that effort appeared to slow this year.
“Hong Kong is uniquely positioned to link virtual assets to traditional financial instruments,” Chan said. “I’m glad to see that Chainlink’s vision and tech – in particular the cross-chain interoperability protocol, CCIP – have made remarkable progress in being adopted in the traditional finance world.”

Chainlink has been pushing to make its technology part of the back-end for what it sees as a future of blockchain-driven finance. It has been working with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) for multiple years to enable blockchain transactions on the dominant global financial messaging network. Banks will be able to start trials of digital asset transactions over Swift from next year, the organisation said this month.
“We’ve made a lot of progress integrating existing payment flows like Swift into blockchain events, and we’ve made a lot of progress in getting central banks more comfortable with interconnecting their chains,” Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, told the Post on the sidelines of the event. “I think at the end of the day, it’ll be a mix of interconnected central bank chains and existing payment systems like Swift interoperating with all of them.”
Chainlink timed SmartCon to coincide with Hong Kong’s FinTech Week, which held its main events at AsiaWorld-Expo on Monday and Tuesday. Executives and government officials this week have been presenting a vision of a Web3 future that looks beyond cryptocurrencies, with tokenisation of real-world assets being a key part. Yet the idea of blockchain-driven finance has received fresh scrutiny this week.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin alluded to mBridge – a cross-border blockchain project among the central banks of mainland China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – by suggesting similar technology could be used to evade sanctions, central banks and finance chiefs discussed the possibility of trying to shut down the project by having the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) pull support, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the talks. The mBridge project was incubated by the BIS Innovation Hub in Hong Kong.
BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens said at a banking conference on Thursday that the bank would leave the project. “The BIS is leaving that project not because it was a failure, or not because of political considerations, but mostly because … it is at a level where the partners can carry it on by themselves,” he said at the Santander International Banking Conference in Madrid.
Unlike mBridge, which is a single blockchain, Chainlink enables different blockchains from various entities to link up and talk to each other. Nazarov said that Chainlink has systems in place to verify identities and ensure sanctioned entities are not using its technology, but it is also dependent on external identity systems having accurate data.
“There’s a lot of very accurate identity systems,” Nazarov said. “The challenge is how to make them usable, and then the challenge is how to weave them together with many blockchains. That’s what we do.”

One of the sponsors of SmartCon this year was 1inch, a decentralised finance aggregator designed to find the lowest price for swapping cryptocurrencies. The company announced a collaboration with the family of the late martial arts film star Bruce Lee, whose “one-inch punch” served as inspiration for the firm’s name.
Sergej Kunz, co-founder and CEO of 1inch, a SmartCon sponsor, acknowledged the regulatory risks in the business, but said the company consults lawyers and regulators to ensure compliance.
“It’s a special thing. I would say you cannot regulate in the same manner as you regulate a centralised exchange or stock exchange,” Kunz said. “We know everyone in this space, so we can suggest … what kind of technology should be used and how.”
For Nazarov, Chainlink is uniquely positioned to capitalise on what he sees as the inevitable influx of large institutional players.
“They’re going to have to use blockchains because there’s going to be more and more assets on chain for them to interact with,” he said. “It’s going to be like using email. You don’t have a choice about using email because all your clients are on email.”


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Blockchain

Chainlink makes a case for blockchain-driven finance at its first Hong Kong event

Chainlink’s booth seen on the first day of its SmartCon event at Kerry Hotel in Hung Hom on Wednesday. Photo: Matt Haldane

Chainlink co-founder and CEO Sergey Nazarov explains the company’s latest initiatives on the opening day of SmartCon. Photo: Matt Haldane

The co-founders of the decentralised finance firm 1inch, Anton Bukov (left) and Sergej Kunz (second from left), announce a partnership with the family of the late actor Bruce Lee, whose daughter Shannon Lee (right) during Hong Kong FinTech Week on October 28, 2024. Photo: Matt Haldane

Ant CEO Eric Jing touts tokenisation benefits for cross-border transactions at FinTech Week

Hong Kong FinTech Week 2024 kicked off on Monday with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and tokenisation. Photo: Matt Haldane

Ant Group CEO Eric Jing Xiandong (left) discusses the impact of tokenisation on cross-border settlements and Aliplay’s inroads in Hong Kong at FinTech Week on Monday. Photo: Matt Haldane

Forest Lin, head of Tencent Financial Technology, told an audience at FinTech Week that inbound WeChat payments to the mainland have increased fourfold in the past year. Photo: Matt Haldane

Circle CEO envisions stablecoins playing greater role in Hong Kong trade settlements

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire discusses the potential of stablecoins on the first day of Hong Kong FinTech Week 2024 on Monday. Photo: Hong Kong FinTech Week

Hong Kong FinTech Week 2024 kicked off on October 28 with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and tokenisation. Photo: Matt Haldane

Hong Kong unveils rules for ‘responsible’ AI use as it gets ahead of disruptive technology

Hong Kong FinTech Week 2024 kicked off on October 28 with a greater emphasis on artificial intelligence than Web3 compared with past years. Photo: Matt Haldane

Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po spoke during the opening of the 2024 Hong Kong FinTech Week on October 28, 2024. Photo: Matt Haldane

Hong Kong is ‘living lab’ where Chinese companies can hone AI abilities: Paul Chan

Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po. Photo: SCMP/Jonathan Wong

AI replaces Web3 as hot key word in Hong Kong’s FinTech Week

Signage at Hong Kong FinTech Week 2021 at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. As hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain fades, the show’s organisers see AI tech from the mainland taking centre stage. Photo: Shutterstock

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried speaking remotely at Hong Kong FinTech Week on October 31, 2022. 31OCT22 SCMP/ Matt Haldane

Eddie Yue (middle), the chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, looks at an e-wallet containing 700 yuan of the Chinese digital currency e-CNY at FinTech Week in Hong Kong, November 2, 2023. Photo: Matt Haldane

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As Chainlink touts its technology that has brought blockchain transfers to the Swift network, geopolitical scrutiny is growing in the space


As Chainlink touts its technology that has brought blockchain transfers to the Swift network, geopolitical scrutiny is growing in the space.


Chainlink makes a case for blockchain-driven finance at its first Hong Kong event

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As Chainlink touts its technology that has brought blockchain transfers to the Swift network, geopolitical scrutiny is growing in the space

As Chainlink touts its technology that has brought blockchain transfers to the Swift network, geopolitical scrutiny is growing in the space