Hong Kong Carnival × Bangkok Money 20/20 Observation Notes

What impressed me most about the Hong Kong Blockchain Week this April wasn't any particular panel, but a scene.

Around 10 p.m., in a tea restaurant in Wan Chai, four or five people squeezed around a table, eating stir-fried beef noodles and chatting about their next plans. One friend, who used to work on stablecoin payments, said that his team had fully transitioned to AI; another, who works on on-chain data, said that he now spends half his time helping AI companies build data pipelines.

Nobody was talking about coin prices, nobody was talking about narratives, and even the term Web3 barely appeared.

My initial reaction wasn't surprise, but a strange sense of familiarity—these were the same people sitting at the same table three years ago, undoubtedly talking about DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain games. They were still the same people, just as excited and fully engaged.

I recently visited the Hong Kong Carnival and Bangkok Money 20/20, and one sentence kept running through my mind: The most crypto people are becoming the least crypto.

After the Web3 wave recedes, what's left? After visiting these two sites, I think I have my own answer.

I. Hong Kong: Familiar Faces, Unfamiliar Topics

Let's start with Hong Kong. This year's carnival saw a noticeable decrease in the number of cryptocurrency projects; the lively atmosphere of the past two years, with everyone handing out T-shirts and telling stories, was gone.

This year's official theme is "Mountains, Wind, Clouds, and Sea," with a clear focus—saying goodbye to the cryptocurrency narrative. Three years ago, this statement would have drawn boos from the audience. But this year, no one felt anything was wrong, because everyone had already stopped talking about cryptocurrencies, and a tacit understanding had been reached.

Walking around the exhibition, the faces were familiar: OKX Wallet, TRON, ZA Bank, HashKey, and Newfire. But the topics they were discussing had changed, focusing heavily on two words: RWA and AI.

RWA continues the hype from last year, but frankly, everyone knows who's genuinely working on the project and who's just putting on a show. One assessment I believe holds true: for Hong Kong, RWA is essentially the productization of wealth management and investment—moving real-world assets onto the blockchain for more efficient and easier cross-border distribution. This is precisely what Hong Kong excels at: institutional design and financial productization. With the bubble bursting, Hong Kong is actually more comfortable—the restlessness that never truly belonged to it has finally dissipated.

The AI aspect is even more interesting. Almost every panel is talking about the combination of AI and Web3, but after attending several sessions, I'm honestly saying that most of the discussions only scratch the surface of "these two things should be combined." As for how to combine them or what problems they solve, nobody can explain it clearly.

My feeling is that Web3 is merging with AI not because they've figured it out, but because if they don't, they really have no story to tell. And the guests on stage probably know they're just going through the motions. But survival comes first—that's the survival philosophy of this industry.

There's been little new news about Hong Kong dollar stablecoins. The licenses have been issued, but after asking around, it seems the two major banks are taking their own pace and not rushing to make a big splash; it looks like nobody cares.

But what truly touched me were the people in the audience. The busiest people in the venue weren't the guests, but rather those casually dressed individuals, wearing exhibition badges, moving back and forth in the negotiation area—business development people, community building people, content creators, and those connecting projects with resources. They didn't have impressive resumes, and their speech wasn't necessarily "professional," but their understanding of the industry had grown from countless meals together and repeated setbacks. This understanding wasn't gained from reading reports; it was earned through time.

Whether an industry can weather economic cycles depends not only on how many star companies are at the top, but also on how many people are willing to persevere even without applause.

The foundation of Web3 is still there. But what runs on that foundation has completely changed.

II. Bangkok: A Trojan Horse for Stablecoins

Flying from Hong Kong to Bangkok, the scene takes a dramatic turn.

Money 20/20 is a purely fintech B2B expo; the admission fee isn't cheap, and everyone there dresses like they're going to meet clients. The panel area often has empty seats, but the adjacent business meeting area is packed from opening to closing.

To my surprise, stablecoin and crypto-native companies made up about a third of the exhibitors. OSL, Circle, Ripple, Fireblocks, Cobo, Pyth… at least a dozen companies, many of which were exhibiting for the first time. Money 20/20 even added a special zone called Intersection this year, positioned as the intersection of TradeFi and DeFi—stablecoins are no longer on the periphery of the fintech expo; they are part of the main agenda.

Interestingly, none of these one-third of the crypto companies were selling crypto at their booths.

They're selling payment chains, settlement channels, and asset custody. Some exhibitors even define themselves as "Web 2.5 finance"—one foot in crypto natives, the other in traditional payments. People who come to do business don't care what blockchain is running underneath; they just want three things: fast payments, low costs, and compliance.

I sat in the negotiation area for two afternoons, and every ten minutes I could hear someone talking about Stablecoin at the next table. Nobody was talking about the coin price; everyone was discussing how to build the supply chain, how to connect with merchants, and which company's solution to use for compliance. Everyone there had business to implement.

During a panel discussion, the host directly challenged the guests: "Pix in Brazil already offers instant, free transfers, so why are you even bothering with stablecoins?" The answer was straightforward—Pix solves domestic issues, but it's still ineffective for cross-border transactions. This is probably the most honest positioning of stablecoin payments: it doesn't replace local payment systems, but fills the gap in cross-border transactions that traditional finance has consistently failed to address.

Thanks to Finternet for the invitation. I interviewed Sumsub, and the conversation left a deep impression on me. This company, which provides KYC/KYB services, initially had clients entirely from Web3 projects—exchanges, wallets, and DeFi protocols. However, their largest incremental clients now come from Web2: payment institutions, banks, and companies expanding overseas. Their massive Web3 client base has become an endorsement, allowing them to more smoothly penetrate the traditional financial market. Web3 gave them experience; Web2 is the real market.

See, this is the footnote to what I said: the most crypto-oriented people are becoming the least crypto-oriented. Stablecoins are no longer just "entering" traditional finance; they've completely integrated into it—to the point that at trade shows, you can't distinguish between stablecoin companies and fintech companies. Even if traditional financial institutions don't do stablecoin business themselves, their clients will force them to adopt it.

Stablecoins didn't storm the castle of traditional finance through the front door. Instead, they entered through the back door, and by the time those inside discovered it, the passage was already paved.

III. AI Tag Inflation

The passageway was paved, but new labels were put on it.

At the Bangkok trade show, I counted that about eight out of ten booths I walked by had AI or Agentic printed on them—Agentic Payment, Agentic Wallets, Agentic Banking.

I asked a few companies about their products in detail: What is the most mature use case for your AI module? The answers were all rather vague, basically pointing to the future scenario of A2A (Agent-to-Agent). As for actual transaction volume, everyone tacitly refrained from providing figures.

A company that focused on stablecoin payments a few years ago made a choice many had considered but hadn't yet implemented. With the infrastructure layer already congested, building more channels would mean squeezing into a sea of similar ones. Instead of waiting for the water to come, they chose an existing river and ventured into payment solutions within the booming AI industry. This wasn't about labeling AI, but about providing services for AI. Compared to the vague A2A concepts at trade shows, this was a much clearer approach: don't wait for agents to start paying themselves; address the payment pain points that AI companies already face.

But returning to the AI hype at the exhibition, this scene does resemble Web3 in 2021—infrastructure first, killer applications still nowhere in sight. However, there's a difference: in 2021, demand was created out of thin air to find users, while today's agency payments have at least a real premise—AI agents are indeed growing exponentially, and sooner or later they'll need to pay and collect payments themselves. The question isn't whether the demand exists, but when and in what form.

During the window of "when will it arrive," labeling is the safest option.

What if it arrives?

IV. After the passageway is laid, what happens next?

If you look at Hong Kong and Bangkok side by side, the difference is very clear.

Hong Kong focuses on financial productization—RWA, wealth management, and asset management—competing on product design and distribution channels, combined with operational strategies from the cryptocurrency world. Bangkok focuses on payment gateways—cross-border settlements using stablecoins—competing on compliance licenses and local channels. These two paths combined represent what blockchain truly leaves behind after the Web3 wave subsides—financial infrastructure.

It's not the DeFi Summer's yield frenzy, nor is it the NFT craze of everyone being FOMO. It's about channels, licenses, and partners.

Boring, but real.

Web3's initial promise was "decentralized reconstruction of everything." What survived the receding tide were patches and extensions of the centralized financial system. The cryptpunk revolution didn't happen. But the pipeline was laid inside the walls—this in itself may be more enduring than a revolution.

The passageway is paved, but three problems remain unresolved:

Is it too late to build stablecoin infrastructure? There are already too many companies doing infrastructure at the Bangkok trade show, and the space for differentiation is rapidly shrinking. New entrants don't need to build more channels, but rather figure out what kind of liquidity should flow through those channels—whoever can embed stablecoins into high-frequency, essential scenarios will be the winner in the next phase. It's not about building the channels, it's about using them.
Application solutions are the direction. With a robust infrastructure layer, value is beginning to shift towards the application layer. Companies that laid broadband in the 2000s made the first wave of money; the real big business came from Taobao and WeChat, which later built upon it. Stablecoins are approaching that inflection point.
What about Agentic Payment? I've been tracking this field for a while now. Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe are all making moves in this area, and the x402 protocol is also being developed. But the gap between protocol and implementation isn't technology; it's a trust framework and a sufficiently large cross-border transaction scenario. Otherwise, it will only remain at the level of demos and panels.

However, when stablecoin cross-border payments were first discussed in 2021, they probably received the same reception—"The concept makes sense, but implementation is still a long way off." Five years later, stablecoins have already become integrated into the capillaries of traditional finance. Agentic payments may be at the same stage. It's just that this window of opportunity will be much shorter.

V. In Conclusion

On the plane back, what kept replaying in my mind wasn't the contents of those panels, but rather the table in the tea restaurant.

One switched to AI, another is building data pipelines for an AI company, and the rest are still discussing how to integrate stablecoin payments with more merchants. Three years ago, they were talking about a completely different world, but one thing hasn't changed—they're still there, still working, still throwing themselves into the pool.

What makes the Web3 community truly unique isn't how cutting-edge the technology is, but rather its inherent appeal to people who, regardless of the water's temperature, are willing to jump in first. The landscape may change, the narratives may shift, but this raw sense of participation will not disappear. It's simply changed its attire.

After the tide receded, no revolution occurred. But the most crypto enthusiasts, with their tactics, speed, and survival instincts, are infiltrating larger battlefields such as traditional finance, AI, and cross-border payments. They no longer shout slogans, but they are more dangerous than before.

Because this time, they were wearing suits.

YZi Labs announces Haley Huang and Ricky Wang joining its Web3 investment team.

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