From November 3 to 7, FinTech Week 2025 was grandly held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. As Asia's leading financial technology event, Hong Kong FinTech Week celebrated its tenth anniversary. This year, the conference will further strengthen its international influence, create a larger global stage, focus on and explore core areas driving financial technology innovation such as artificial intelligence, Web3, blockchain, digital payments, digital banking, and more.

Key officials including Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Financial Secretary Paul Chan, and Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China Le Lei will attend and deliver speeches; industry leaders such as Tencent's Vice President Lin Haifeng, Ant Group's Chairman Eric Jing, Binance CEO Richard Teng, Meitu's Founder Cai Wensheng, among others, will also take the stage as guest speakers. BlockBeats reporters will provide real-time coverage on-site. The following are the latest updates:

November 4

Cai Wensheng: AI-Web3 Startup Center Fully Occupied, Providing a Better Startup Environment for the Industry

On November 4, Meitu's Founder Cai Wensheng stated at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 that the previously invested HK$650 million to purchase the entire Park Aura Building in Causeway Bay to create an AI-Web3 startup center was intended to set an example. The building, located in the heart of Hong Kong, provides a place for incubating startups, with the subway station just a minute away and convenient dining and accommodation options nearby. The building is now fully occupied by AI and Web3 companies. Cai hopes that other real estate developers will join in exploring this trend to provide a better entrepreneurial environment for Hong Kong's AI and Web3 industry. Hong Kong's rich talent pool has already laid the foundation for the future incubation of startups, and it is hoped that the Hong Kong government can provide more guidance and support for the development of the AI and Web3 industries by civilians and industry insiders.

Cai also mentioned that the current market value of native cryptocurrencies is about $4 trillion, with the potential to grow by at least 10 times over the next 10 years. Even if the market value reaches $40 trillion afterward, there is still room for growth compared to the trillions-scale of traditional assets.

Earlier on May 1, it was reported that Cai Wensheng acquired the entire Park Aura Building in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. The property, known as "PARK AURA" located on Hennessy Road, was completed in 2020, with 25 floors (from underground to the 24th floor) and a single floor area of around 2,041 square feet, with a total gross floor area of about 53,000 square feet. Cai plans to transform the building into an AI-Web3 startup center: the 1st and 2nd floors will house an AI-themed café (similar to a garage café model) with AI technology lecture spaces. Some floors will be designated as AI-Space shared office areas, free for Hong Kong entrepreneurs to apply for. The remaining floors will be planned as studios in the AI and Web3 fields.

Binance CEO: CZ Lays a Strong Compliance Foundation for Binance, Cooperation and Win-Win Are More Meaningful Than "Being the Largest"

On November 4, Binance CEO Richard Teng stated at Hong Kong Fintechweek 2025 that Binance had foreseen the changing trend of regulation in the industry in its early days and made significant early investments. CZ is a visionary leader who has laid a strong compliance foundation and mission statement for Binance, assembling a top-notch team—all credit goes to him, and I am just continuing to move forward standing on the shoulders of giants. When I took over as CEO, I set out three core missions:

First, to continue building the world's largest and best cryptocurrency ecosystem. Providing the safest, most transparent, and most powerful products and services to meet user needs.

Second, compliance is a core competitive advantage. The regulatory direction is very clear, and compliance must be turned into a competitive advantage. Binance's compliance investment grew by over 30% last year and is growing by over 30% again this year. With a compliance team of over 1000 people, Binance is one of the most compliant exchanges globally, closely collaborating with regulators worldwide to promote the development of intelligent regulation, truly supporting industry growth.

Third, cooperation and win-win partnerships, whether in cooperation with local banks, payment institutions, or project teams. The industry is still in its early stages, and working together to grow the ecosystem is more meaningful than just "being the largest." The stronger the ecosystem, the more everyone benefits.

Additionally, he mentioned that mainstreaming of crypto requires two elements: clear regulation and institutional participation. Previously, regulatory agencies were unwilling to invest time, energy, and resources to understand this field, but that has changed. Furthermore, any asset class relying solely on retail participation lacks depth and breadth. Once institutions enter, they bring different investment horizons, strategies, and scales, greatly enhancing market depth and resilience.

When asked by the host about "whether institutional participation reducing market volatility also erodes the core idea of decentralized cryptocurrency," Richard Teng expressed that he completely disagrees. The more different types of players brought onto this stage, the more active and dynamic the market becomes. While cryptocurrency technology itself relies on decentralization, immutability, and other features, the existence of centralized players can actually maximize the technology's value. The ideal situation is to both leverage the "decentralized technological advantages" and provide the "best centralized experience."

Leo Yeung: Hong Kong Adopts a Prudent and Consistently Paced Regulatory Approach, 65% Progress on February Roadmap

On November 4, Eric Yip, Member of the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, stated at the Hong Kong Finternet 2025 Asian Digital Asset Summit that Hong Kong's regulatory legislation on digital assets still requires more time. It needs to enact appropriate legislation in a dynamic manner and listen to the voices of this vibrant market and industry to ensure that the regulatory approach keeps pace with the times.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission is not the fastest or most aggressive regulatory authority and currently adopts a prudent and consistent regulatory approach. In February of this year, the Commission released a roadmap, and the overall implementation progress can now be described as 65%. They hope that by this time next year, they can use 100% or even 110% to describe it.

On February 19, 2025, the Securities and Futures Commission unveiled the "ASPIRe" roadmap at the Consensus Hong Kong 2025 forum, strengthening the security, innovation, and growth of Hong Kong's virtual asset market through a five-pillar framework to promote the sustainable development of the virtual asset ecosystem. The roadmap covers 12 key initiatives, including streamlining market access processes, enhancing safeguards (such as custody and insurance standards), expanding product scope (such as considering open virtual asset pledging, derivative trading, and margin loans), upgrading infrastructure (such as hot/cold wallet security management), and enhancing cooperation with stakeholders. Ashley Alder, the Commission's CEO, emphasized that the core of this roadmap is to expand the services of Virtual Asset Trading Platforms (VATPs), while ensuring compliance and investor protection to solidify Hong Kong's position as a global virtual asset liquidity hub.

SC Ventures CEO: Asset Tokenization and the Evolution of Financial Infrastructure Will Bring Breakthroughs to the New Financial System

On November 4, SC Ventures CEO Alex Manson stated at the Hong Kong Finternet 2025 Asian Digital Asset Summit that the convergence of digital banks, banking as a service, the digital economy, and the new economy is a future trend. Cryptocurrency custody will rapidly expand to encompass the entire custody of digital assets in the future. The integration of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency has already been opened up by AI agents, and in the future, the share of DeFi relative to CeFi will continue to increase. The tokenization of all assets and the evolution of infrastructure will bring breakthroughs to the new financial system in the near future, ultimately disrupting traditional finance.

November 3

Franklin CEO: New Business Models in the Crypto Space Will Disrupt Traditional Finance and Give Rise to Great Companies

On November 3, Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, stated at the Hong Kong Fintechweek 2025 that previously, the crypto world and the traditional finance world were two parallel universes, both large in scale but almost completely non-overlapping. Like two parallel lines moving forward, suddenly the situation changed. The traditional finance world began to awaken and integrate with the crypto world, putting financial products on the chain, and customers began to strongly demand exposure to crypto assets.

For millennials, Bitcoin is like their gold. I think Bitcoin itself is an asset, almost a bit like a religion — either you believe in it or you don't. Franklyn is paying attention to what's happening in the crypto world because disruption isn't just coming from traditional business competitors, but potentially from the crypto world as well. The crypto space will see many new business models, and I believe the next great companies will emerge from this space — alongside AI companies.

Furthermore, he also revealed that his money market fund is about to announce significant news. When asked about the main reason for attending the Hong Kong event, Jenny said, "We are excited about the prospects of the money market fund, as new demand has been discovered in many jurisdictions. I think maybe the announcement will be made here in the next two days."

Eric Yip: Will Allow Professional Investors Access to More Investment Products, Establishing a Fundamental Security Network for the Digital Asset Class

On November 3, Eric Yip, a member of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, stated at Hong Kong Fintechweek 2025 that in addition to the earlier mentioned initiative to allow local licensed virtual asset trading platforms to share a global order book with overseas affiliates, the Commission will also allow professional investors to access more investable products. Hong Kong needs to further develop its financial and AI infrastructure, manage multiple risks, strive harder to establish a fundamental security network for the digital asset class, and collaborate with global regulators to ensure that there is no longer arbitrage in the flow of traffic.

Wen Kaiyin: Close Financial Technology Cooperation in the Greater Bay Area, Strengthen Integration of Financial Technology Resources within the Greater Bay Area

On November 3, Wen Kaiyin, Deputy Director of the Local Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, stated at Hong Kong Fintechweek 2025 that Guangzhou is leading the nation in financial technology innovation supervision, capital market financial technology innovation, blockchain innovation applications, digital RMB pilot programs, and more. Since the implementation of the financial technology innovation supervision pilot in 2020, Guangzhou has implemented 12 financial technology innovation projects, and the capital market financial technology innovation pilot has landed the first batch of 13 pilot projects, ranking first in the approval rate among pilot cities.

In the future, Guangzhou will closely cooperate with financial technology in the Greater Bay Area, fully leverage the advantages of Hong Kong's high degree of financial internationalization, Shenzhen's active market innovation, and Guangzhou's strong scientific research institutions. Strengthen the integration of financial technology resources within the Greater Bay Area, increase support for the construction of financial technology infrastructure such as data transaction and storage platforms, the national financial technology evaluation center, etc., deepen mutually beneficial cooperation in areas such as building a financial technology collaborative innovation platform, a financial technology industry alliance, etc. Strengthen the network synergy effect of the core cities in the Greater Bay Area with point-to-point connection and line-to-area coverage, promoting high-quality development of financial technology in the Greater Bay Area.

Soo Chee Keong: Hong Kong to Allow Licensed Local Virtual Asset Trading Platforms to Share Global Order Book with Overseas

On November 3, Ashley Alder, CEO of the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, stated at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 that Hong Kong will allow licensed local virtual asset trading platforms to share global order books with overseas affiliates to enhance liquidity.

Eddie Yue: Building Next-Generation Data and Payment Infrastructure to Support Industry-Wide AI Applications

On November 3, Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 that the Hong Kong fintech development blueprint "Fintech 2030" aims to develop Hong Kong into a robust, resilient, and forward-looking international fintech hub, focusing on four key areas covering over 40 specific projects, including:

Building next-generation data and payment infrastructure to support secure, efficient, and scalable data sharing, enhance cross-border payment connectivity, create new opportunities in various aspects such as expanding credit channels for businesses, promoting trade finance, and providing more personalized financial services and convenient cross-border remittance for citizens.

Supporting industry-wide AI applications to further drive the comprehensive and responsible use of AI in Hong Kong and beyond in the financial industry.

Strengthening business and technology resilience and preparing for the quantum computing era, including developing a new authentication framework for fintech cybersecurity, establishing new alert systems through real-time analysis, and enhancing the robustness of the financial system and financial services security.

Promoting financial tokenization and driving a thriving tokenization ecosystem, the HKMA will take the lead in demonstrating asset tokenization, such as normalizing the issuance of tokenized government bonds, and concurrently exploring the feasibility of tokenizing foreign exchange fund notes and bonds. The HKMA is set to launch the Ensemble project pilot scheme to support real transactions and continue to collaborate with the industry and other central banks to nurture innovative tokenization use cases.

Standard Chartered Bank CEO: All Transactions Will Ultimately Settle Through Blockchain

On November 3, Standard Chartered Bank CEO Bill Winters stated at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 that both the bank and the Hong Kong SAR leadership believe that all transactions will ultimately settle through blockchain and all currencies will be digitized.

Paul Chan: Stablecoins Reject Investment or Speculation, License Approvals Target Applicants with Robust Real-World Use Cases Only

On November 3, Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan said at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 that Hong Kong's financial regulators have a dual mission of regulation and market development. While encouraging innovation, it is also essential to ensure the genuine applicability of digital asset regulation, investor protection, and financial stability. Whether it's digital asset trading platforms or stablecoins, we apply the same activities, the same risks, and the same regulatory principles. In particular, our regulatory approach to stablecoins is clear: stablecoins are not for investment or speculation but to facilitate cost reduction, cross-border transactions, and real economic activities. That's why under the licensing regime, approval of stablecoin licenses is only open to applicants with a sustainable and robust business model backing and real-world use cases.

Jing Xiandong: Future AI Agents Will Face Customers, AI and Blockchain Will Reshape Financial Services

On November 3, Jing Xiandong, Chairman of Ant Group, stated at Hong Kong Fintechweek 2025 that AI and blockchain will reshape financial services. The financial services industry is a data-rich and language-intensive industry. The service of financial products is abstract, complex, and credit-based, heavily relying on linguistic descriptions for communication and delivery. This phenomenon covers various areas in the financial field from backend to customer-facing interfaces. Therefore, I anticipate that it may be necessary to assign a dedicated account manager to each customer. This manager will be AI-powered to answer questions, solve issues, and provide users with personalized and cost-effective advice. This is actually a multi-agent system, an agenda system. This is a short-term change in the financial field that we can expect to be driven by AI technology.

Furthermore, tokenization driven by blockchain technology can convert various assets into on-chain tokens, enabling assets to be traded very transparently and trustworthily across institutions and markets. We can anticipate a new payment area, truly achieving real-time global payments, which will benefit global trade and improve settlement efficiency. This change will bring more regulated innovative sectors and more involvement from regulatory bodies. Transactions on the blockchain are beginning to shift from speculation to value exchange, and the transformation of financial services will be driven by blockchain.

Lu Lei: Exploring New Cross-Border Payment Solutions with Digital Currency, Building a Blockchain and Digital Asset Dual Platform

On November 3, Lu Lei, Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China, stated at Hong Kong Fintechweek 2025 that looking ahead, digital currency will be used to explore new cross-border payment solutions. The principles of integrity, compliance, and interoperability have become the basic principles for the construction of legal digital currency infrastructure. The People's Bank is actively discussing openness, inclusivity, and innovative cross-border payment solutions with various parties to empower the high-quality development of the digital economy.

First, it is to promote multilateral central bank digital currency bridge cooperation to explore a new paradigm for cross-border payments. The People's Bank and multiple monetary authorities, including the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, are jointly exploring and have formed a multilateral cooperation model based on the central bank digital currency bridge as a template. This model is based on equal governance under central bank contracts and blockchain architecture, connecting payment systems of various economies and legal digital currency systems to achieve instant cross-border payments in multiple currencies.

Second, relying on the digital RMB cross-border payment platform to provide solutions for central bank digital currency cross-border payment cooperation. The People's Bank provides a bilateral cooperation model based on the digital RMB cross-border payment platform, flexibly supporting cross-border interconnection with systems of various monetary authorities to enjoy a digital experience of intelligent cross-border consumption, trade, and investment.

Third, build a blockchain and digital asset dual-platform to activate the new engine of the value internet. The People's Bank of China has launched the Digital RMB Blockchain Service Platform and Digital Asset Platform. Through the interconnection of these two platforms, under the premise of homogeneous supervision and manageable risks, explore asset digitization innovation conducive to enhancing regulatory efficiency and penetrability, improve value circulation efficiency and transparency, promote the efficient circulation and optimal allocation of economic factors, and empower the value internet.

Paul Chan: Hong Kong Encourages More Investors to Enter the Fintech Field, Accelerating Innovation and Technological Transformation

On November 3, Hong Kong Chief Executive Paul Chan stated in his keynote speech at Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 that there are currently over 1,200 fintech companies in Hong Kong, a 10% increase from last year. It is expected that by 2032, the total revenue of Hong Kong's fintech industry will exceed USD 600 billion, with an annual growth rate of over 28%. In the first nine months of this year, the fundraising scale of initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong has exceeded USD 23 billion. The Hong Kong Capital Investment Entrant Scheme will be relaxed to encourage more investors to enter the fintech field. Hong Kong is also exploring tokenization in conventional finance and applying regulatory sandboxes to promote innovation and prudent risk management. Hong Kong is accelerating innovation and technological transformation, focusing on key areas such as artificial intelligence, life and health sciences, and new energy with the goal of helping emerging industries achieve scale development and prosperity.

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