Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin makes last-minute appearance at Hong Kong Web3 Festival as city woos industry
- Vitalik Buterin made a rare last-minute appearance at Hong Kong’s biggest Web3 event for a 20-minute technical talk on blockchain tech
- Hong Kong has been making a greater effort to woo big-name speakers to the city as it seeks to become a virtual asset hub
The entrepreneur, regarded as a major figure in crypto communities because of his influence over one of the world’s most widely used blockchains, last year cautioned industry players about setting up shop in Hong Kong, suggesting the stability of the city’s new-found support for virtual assets as of the end of 2022 could be fickle.
Hong Kong’s Web3 Festival attracts smaller crowd but greater enthusiasm
“Obviously it’s very friendly now,” Buterin said at the Web3 Transitions Summit in Singapore in September 2023. “But the big question I’m asking, and I think [everyone] is asking, is how stable is the level of friendliness.”
He added that if a crypto project wants to make Hong Kong their home, it would need to be confident that the city will continue to be friendly to the sector many years from now, “when all kinds of unknown, regulatory and political events are going to happen”.
Buterin acknowledged at the time that he does not “understand Hong Kong well”, and even less the “complicated interaction between Hong Kong and the mainland lately”.
His comments prompted a response from Hong Kong lawmaker Johnny Ng Kit-chong, who said on X, formerly Twitter, that “Hong Kong’s policies and laws will not change overnight”, and dismissed the idea of any complications because Beijing supports the “one country, two systems” arrangement that allows the city some policy autonomy. Commercial use of cryptocurrency is strictly banned in mainland China.
Ng also invited Buterin to “come to Hong Kong to understand the situation”.
Buterin is one of the few heavyweight speakers who attended the Hong Kong event this year, as the city increased its efforts to woo international crypto talent and businesses with the goal of becoming a virtual asset hub. The hall was completely packed with crypto faithful at an event where attendance had been patchy most days.
His talk, however, was just over 20 minutes and dealt strictly with technical upgrades to the Ethereum blockchain. He then left as quickly as he appeared, taking no questions.
Investor Cathie Wood, founder of US funds manager ARK Invest, dialled in remotely on the first day of the conference. In an onstage interview with HashKey Capital, she applauded Hong Kong’s virtual asset policy initiatives and suggested that the US is lagging behind. The investor also gave a highly optimistic view of bitcoin’s future, predicting that the token will trade at US$1.5 million by 2030.
