The CYPHER ASIA 2026 Smart Crypto Finance Forum, initiated and hosted by FinChain and jointly built by CEOs of leading global crypto financial institutions, top investors, and regulatory experts, successfully concluded on April 21 at Cyberport, Hong Kong. As one of the most influential smart crypto finance summits in Asia, the forum facilitated in-depth discussions on key topics such as institutional infrastructure, compliance pathways, risk management, stablecoin strategies, AI agent economics, and capital market participation.
The forum was a lively affair, with guests delivering memorable quotes and sharing valuable insights in their keynote speeches and four thematic panels.
Lin Chen: Opening Speech Defines the RWA Paradigm
The event was opened by Professor Lin Chen, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, who explained that tokenized gold can serve as a representative paradigm for the implementation of RWAs. He elaborated on the development logic and strategic significance of tokenized gold from both academic research and industry practice perspectives. Hong Kong plays a crucial role in the strategic process of building an international gold trading and RWA issuance center, and this will also provide important theoretical support and market reference for the expansion of RWA business in Hong Kong.
Zhou Geng: Introduction to Fosun Wealth Holdings' Digital Asset Business
Zhou Geng, Deputy Chief Investment Officer of Fosun Wealth Holdings, introduced that Fosun Wealth Holdings is an AI-driven global one-stop Web5 (Web2+Web3) wealth management platform, covering Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission licenses of types 1, 2, 4, 6 and 9. It provides one-stop wealth management services to customers through the dual platforms of "Star Wealth" (TO-C retail) and "Star Road Technology" (TO-B institutional).
Zhou Geng pointed out that Fosun Wealth Holdings must strictly adhere to the compliance and governance requirements of licensed corporations for the access of each type of underlying asset. The tokens after being put on the blockchain are true "on-chain certificates of compliant assets." Fosun Wealth Holdings is committed to introducing traditional high-quality assets onto the blockchain, building on the successful tokenization of assets such as money market funds, IP, and gold mines. With its complete closed-loop capability of "three licenses and one link," Fosun Wealth Holdings is constructing Hong Kong's most comprehensive compliant digital asset ecosystem—from traditional wealth management to VA transaction execution, and then to RWA tokenization, connecting the entire "decision-execution-distribution-protocol" chain, enabling compliant assets to truly be on-chain and available in various scenarios.
Zhao Chen: AI Agents and Web 4.0 – The Leap from “Employees” to “Economic Entities”
Finchain CEO and Fosun Wealth Holdings Partner Zhao Chen pointed out that the prerequisite for AI Agents to truly take a step forward is to have inalienable property rights—such as their own blockchain wallet, where the private key is kept by themselves, and intelligent investment and financing can be achieved by combining payment protocols.
However, to address the potential risks of malicious actions by agents, the agents themselves require a complete decentralized identity system, and there must be a certain degree of connection between the agents and their deployers to form a legally recognized ownership relationship. He introduced the FinChain Starlink product being promoted: the Finpass protocol, which includes Agent UID, capability declaration and verification, and a dynamic reputation system, laying a deep foundation for the future development of a new financial market for autonomous intelligent agents.
Regarding FUSD, Zhao Chen revealed that its underlying assets are three tokenized money market funds, with a current combined yield of approximately 3.4%. Through the Rebase protocol, it achieves a "money market fund-like" experience where funds automatically increase their balance daily when held in a wallet. A typical use case is to use FUSD as the underlying asset to obtain credit authorization on exchanges for strategic trading, potentially earning an additional 3% yield difference compared to USDT.
Quantitative Trading Competition Officially Launched: $100 Million Prize Pool, Connecting Traditional and Crypto Finance
During the forum, the $100M Partners Global Web3 Quantitative Competition and AI Quantitative Talent Incubation Program were officially launched.
As a key agenda item of this forum, the $100M Partners Global Web3 Quantitative Trading Competition was officially launched. This competition, jointly initiated by Fosun Wealth Holdings, FinChain, exSat, ForthTech, and 1token, is open to quantitative trading teams worldwide and features a multi-strategy track for competition.
The competition has three core objectives:
1. Discovering Top Quantitative Strategies: Through live trading competition, we select outstanding quantitative strategies that are adapted to the high volatility and 24/7 trading characteristics of the Web3 market;
2. Incubate quantitative talent: Provide funding, data, and computing power support for individuals with a combined background in machine learning and quantitative trading;
3. Integrating traditional and crypto finance: Inviting traditional quantitative institutions to participate and promoting the two-way flow of strategies and methodologies.
The competition features multiple tracks including spot trading, futures trading, arbitrage, and AI-driven strategies, with a total prize pool and follow-on investment reaching millions of US dollars.
Wang Lin, CMO of exSat, shared the vision behind launching the competition. The exSat team can be traced back to EOS in 2016, and has grown alongside the industry from DeFi to BTCFi and then to CeFi. With the issuance of RWA assets and the emergence of high-quality assets like FUSD, the landscape of crypto quantitative trading is changing—but there are too few strategy teams that can truly be seen by traditional institutions and large investors, and the overall industry penetration and data transparency are very limited.
Sistine Chen: Giving Ultimate Productivity a Financial Exoskeleton – On-Chain Banking's "Plan B"
Sistine Chen, CBO of exSat, stated that "on-chain banking" aims to provide users with a one-stop on-chain account covering wealth management, asset management, payments, trading, and institutional-grade liquidity and returns. Its core design involves a structural separation of asset custody, asset management, and trading activities: assets are held in custody by licensed institutions (such as Standard Chartered and Copper), ensuring security while improving the efficiency of fund utilization through the on-chain account system.
In terms of product structure, exSat integrates FUSD, launched by FinChain, as the underlying asset allocation tool, providing users with basic returns based on currency market assets; on top of that, it further expands the return potential through a multi-strategy return enhancement mechanism.
She stated, "In the old financial system, some doors are not easy to open. But we can build a new path on the blockchain—a Plan B that belongs to the user. I believe that one day, Plan B can become Plan A."
Kevin Law (OSL): Stablecoin Payments and Global Compliance Strategy
Kevin Law, Head of Strategic Partnerships at OSL, shared OSL's exploration of integrating AI, stablecoins, and traditional finance. He revealed that OSL has partnered with dozens of Hong Kong Type 1/Type 9 traditional institutions. Institutional clients can leverage OSL's market depth and selected bank USD API channels to gain 24/7 access to USD and the freedom to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies, seizing trading opportunities in AI, stablecoins, and traditional assets. Last year, OSL acquired the Canadian company Banxa, acquiring payment/exchange licenses in over 40 regions globally. This year, it partnered with Anchorage in the US to launch USDGO, targeting enterprise-level stablecoin compliance operations. OSL's three main strategies are: expanding institutional reach through partnerships with Hong Kong stablecoin licensees, USDT, USDC, Anchorage, and others; building infrastructure with other stablecoin issuers; and further mergers and acquisitions to expand into emerging markets beyond Hong Kong.
Darren: Real-world trading insights on the evolution from a single driver to a systematic approach
ForthTech Co-Founder Darren presented the systematic evolution of quantitative trading through a "4-minute PPT + 4-minute live trading session." He pointed out that simple strategies are no longer sustainable for profitability. Taking the ETH Funding Regime Shift as an example, since April 2023 (20-day rolling), the Funding Rate (PnL) fell below 0 for the first time at the beginning of this year, and traditional arbitrage profits have significantly converged, reflecting changes in market structure. He pointed out four current industry realities: 1) Information overload: the explosion of AI and multi-source data has resulted in a large amount of invalid data; 2) Dispersed liquidity: distributed across exchanges and on-chain, requiring efficiency improvements and liquidity risk control through stablecoin enhancement and fund allocation; 3) Frequent black swan events: extreme market conditions are becoming the norm, requiring strengthened tail risk and automated risk control; 4) Accelerated institutionalization: the market is shifting from being driven by retail investor sentiment to being dominated by institutions, making it more difficult to obtain alpha.
Panel 1: After AI-powered intelligent agents, what will change and what will not?
Hosted by Vito Luo, President of ME Group, the panel included Mike Ma (Solana Foundation Solution Architect), Yinzhen Wang (Executive Director of SoftBank Asia), Lance (CTO of FinChain), Linyuan Yang (Founding Partner of Copilot Venture Studio), and Kaelan (Co-founder of NeoSoul).
The Changing and Unchanging Investment Judgment Criteria – Wang Yinzhen points out that starting with GPT-3.5, generative AI presents an operating system-level opportunity. The first wave of profit-makers were hardware companies, followed by application companies. MiniMax, Zhipu, and others saw their valuations skyrocket due to their "cheap and easy-to-use" features. Kaelan believes that startup teams need to be "down-to-earth yet have lofty aspirations"—they must have both a grand vision and the ability to implement engineering projects; they must have a long-term perspective and dare to try new things, as "true innovation often lies in the seemingly useless."
Changes in Architecture and User Experience – Mike Ma shared data on x402 (Agent Payment Protocol) transactions on Solana: currently, over half of x402 transactions occur on Solana, much of which are used to purchase developer tools, cloud services, and for information filtering. He proposed adding three new layers of trust at the technical level: identity trust, behavioral trust, and process trust. However, the essence of payment remains unchanged – a trustworthy and traceable value transfer. Lance believes the biggest changes are at the architecture and design level. The large model is a flexible layer, requiring engineering "harness" to equip probabilistic outputs. Previously, the "Intent-Centric" wave was difficult to implement due to lagging underlying technology; only with the support of AI can it truly be realized.
The OPC (One Person Company) trend – The guests unanimously agreed that the trend is valid, but only if the individual is a "super person". Mike Ma revealed that the Solana Foundation and Alibaba have established an OPC developer base in Shanghai, which will provide support for OPC developers and those who want to try new things.
Panel 2: The Development and Challenges of Digital Asset Management
Hosted by Wang Lin (exSat CMO), the panel included Joey Shi (1token Head of Growth), Ashton Tan (Copper Asia Pacific Head), Colin Lin (Executive Director and Industry RWA Director of Starway Technology), Yilia Xiang (ForthTech CMO), and Li Mingyue (Partner at Beijing Strategy Law Firm).
Product Evolution – Joey Shi points out that traditional investors have a direct demand for BTC Spot and ETH Spot due to the rapid fundraising by BlackRock and Fidelity; Crypto native investors have more diversified needs, with new targets such as gold, silver, copper commodities, US stocks, and RWA appearing on HyperLiquid. Future products will become more specialized – Structured Products and new Alpha targets will emerge in large numbers. Yilia Xiang believes that RWA will definitely become the next growth engine. After the first wave of ETF inflows, traditional institutional funds entered the market on a large scale for the first time, bringing with them traditional rules, compliance systems, gameplay, talent, and assets, further driving the digital asset management industry towards compliant funds. However, if the industry is to grow further in the future, the existing native gameplay and assets cannot absorb the incremental trillion-dollar market, requiring a third product form: off-chain asset tokenization.
Custody Architecture – Ashton Tan emphasizes that compliance and licensing are the bottom line. Copper uses MPC multisignature to prevent wallet theft and adopts a bankruptcy remote structure. Institutional clients repeatedly ask about the structure, technology, licenses, and capital efficiency – mapping assets to exchanges through ClearLoop to trade and generate returns.
On-chain transparency in the AI era – Colin Lin points out that Web2 and Web3 are not an option; it is expected that in the next 2-3 years, financial institutions will be required to understand both, and this will become an essential skill for financial professionals.
Panel 3: Financial Infrastructure for Digital Currencies
Hosted by Sunny Ng (CEO of PANews), the guests included Jacky Kong (Head of Avalanche Ava Labs Hong Kong), Hu Xuanfeng (CMO of FinChain), Tika Lum (Head of Institutional Business at KuCoin), Ni Sen Phyrex (KOL), and Liu Huiyi (CTO of Sanwei Security/Cryptography Expert).
The changes brought about by the entry of financial institutions—Liu Huiyi pointed out that the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over Web3 is quantum computing. Recent research shows that using an improved version of Shor's algorithm, the number of qubits required to break the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) used by Bitcoin and Ethereum is significantly lower than previously estimated. This discovery directly accelerates the migration process to quantum-resistant cryptography (PQC). Currently, the Ethereum Foundation, following Google's advice, is accelerating the transition from ECDSA to PQC algorithms such as ML-KEM/ML-DSA. Promoting PQC migration in the Web3 field is now imperative. Sanwei Security has launched a full range of PQC products to address this. Ni Sen believes that the recent pre-IPO trend is obvious, but simply putting US stocks on-chain is a pseudo-demand—crypto users are truly interested not in spot trading, but in shorting, going long, leverage, and contracts. Tika Lum does not entirely agree; he believes that the tokenization of US stocks is not a pseudo-demand, but a process. RWA should not be considered an asset class, but rather infrastructure/process/tool. Jacky Kong pointed out from the perspective of public blockchains that institutions are increasingly accepting the middleware solution of public liquidity + customizable control, and the Hybrid Model is the trend for RWA and traditional institutions to enter the market.
Stablecoins and PayFi – Hu Xuanfeng proposed the concept of Stablecoin 2.0: FUSD always delivers interest from the underlying money market fund to users. Large-scale FUSD issuance has already occurred on Avalanche, with assets held in Copper custody, allowing users to earn an additional 3.5%-4.2% or even 5%+ interest through on-chain liquidity tools. Nissen added that PayFi was first proposed by Huma, defined as "using interest-bearing assets for payments without touching the principal," but truly implemented PayFi at the consumer payment level is still lacking.
Quantum Threats and AI Threats – Liu Huiyi pointed out that traditional finance and Web3 are rapidly and deeply integrating, and customer needs have moved beyond basic “single-point business pilots” to systematic asset management, cold and hot wallet separation, and MPC (Multi-Party Computation). Recently, Sanwei Security assisted several institutions in building seamless interconnection between “institutional-grade wallets” and “KMS cloud keys,” marking that traditional finance has moved beyond superficial attempts and is substantially embarking on a profound transformation of its role and business model.
Hong Kong Regulation vs. Europe and America – Jacky Kong reveals that the Hong Kong Regulatory Authority (HKMA) is very open and pragmatic, "Chain-not-State," even more open than Singapore. Hu Xuanfeng stated that one hand is extended to public chain partners like Avalanche and Solana, and the other to trading platforms like Copper and KuCoin; these collaborations can provide significant value for the advancement of Hong Kong's crypto finance.
Panel 4: Institutional Finance and Digital Asset Adoption
Hosted by Zhao Chen (CEO of FinChain), the guests included Jerrina Yu (Marketing Director of Future Money Acquisition Corp), Shui Shan Shan (Growth Lead of Morpho APAC), and Giselle Lai (Digital Asset Team of Fidelity Investment International).
The current state of institutional digital assets – Giselle Lai is relatively optimistic, pointing out that large asset managers have moved past the Proof-of-Concept (POC) stage. Since the issuance of BTC ETFs, they have become effective intermediaries, with over $5.5 billion flowing into BTC investment products, and institutional investors' share rising from the initial 15% to 25%. RWA tokenization has reached $30 billion, and Fidelity believes that more and more assets will be issued on-chain in the future. Rena believes that we are currently in a transitional phase from "trial to scaling," with the wealth gap widening, but it will gradually move towards productization. Shui Shan Shan stated that Morpho has deep cooperation with the world's top 30 financial institutions, divided into "proactive" and "conservative" groups, and the second phase of transition is significantly affected by differences in national regulations and internal resources.
The main obstacle, according to Jerrina Yu, is compliance and risk control. Crypto projects face significant challenges in achieving due diligence, as many risks are unknown. Shui Shan Shan cites the example of Hong Kong's newly issued stablecoin licenses, which are only issued by Standard Chartered and HSBC, and can only be used by licensed entities. "Introducing new assets into traditional markets and allowing only traditional entities to use them is not fundamentally different from the previous Fiat." Giselle Lai states that the bottleneck for RWA lies in regulatory fragmentation (the frameworks in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Europe are not cross-border) and the unchanged Operation Model—most tokenized Treasury/MMFs are merely Digital Twins; only when the token itself is a native share of the fund can the technological benefits be truly realized. Hu Hengfeng adds that most RWAs on the market are Wrapper Tokens or ADR Tokens, adding an extra layer of counterparty risk.
Institutional Outlook – Shui Shan Shan points out a significant shift in on-chain lending: two years ago, over 95% of loan collateral was BTC and ETH; in the past six months, almost all new asset issuers have been RWA. Maple will launch Maple Med next month, supporting fixed-rate lending, which is ideal for RWA and institutional assets. Kay states that Crypto Penetration currently accounts for about 5% of traditional asset management, compared to about 40% penetration of traditional ETF wrappers, indicating huge growth potential.
Closing Q&A: Market Outlook --- Jerrina Yu predicts the US-Iran war won't end quickly, BTC will maintain a good outlook, and altcoins are recommended for swing trading. Shui Shan Shan revealed that the Supply theft last weekend resulted in over $200 million in bad debt for Aave, causing significant short-term on-chain volatility, while institutions will pay more attention to on-chain risk assessment in the long term. Giselle Lai pointed out that the key indicators for the next 6-12 months are global M2 liquidity (with a correlation of up to 0.8 with BTC price over the past decade) and BTC ETP fund flows. Zhao Chen summarized: This year's market is very similar to 2019, "industry liquidity is very poor, Web3 Level 1 is almost at a standstill," but 2026 will be a very good year, "provided there is a 312 (referring to a major market downturn)." The market may be resembling the window between 2019 and 2020, and 2026-2027 may see a different landscape.
Successful conclusion:
The forum concluded with a fascinating dialogue between Zhao Chen and Hu Xuanfeng on market cycles. From keynote speeches to the four panels, from Maslow's hierarchy of needs for AI agents to the official launch of the quantitative competition, from "Plan B" for on-chain banks to compliance paths adopted by institutions, CYPHER ASIA 2026 presented a high-density, high-concentration, and highly interactive content experience, making it one of the most in-depth smart crypto finance forums during the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival.
