Article author, source: ME News

Co-hosted by WLFI, Bakkt, HKU School of Economics and Management Senior Management Education and ME Group, the Crypto Finance Forum will be grandly launched on Hong Kong Island on February 12, 2026. As a top dialogue hub connecting East and West, academia and business, traditional finance and crypto industries, the forum brought together global regulators, traditional finance executives, founders of cryptographic native enterprises, and top academic experts to discuss institutional opportunities and new technical paradigms under a compliance framework with the vision of “decoding encryption and reshaping the future of finance”.

event information

Event Topic: Crypto Finance Forum

Activity time: February 12, 2026 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM (HKT)

Event venue: The University of Hong Kong

Organizers: WLFI, Bakkt, HKU School of Economics and Management Senior Management Education, ME Group

Strategic Partners: Nano Labs Ltd (Nasdaq: NA), CoinFoundation, Tencent Cloud, OneAsset

Media Partners: Foresight News, Odaily, Jinse Finance, PANews, Bitpush, Caihua

Core agenda: a high-density feast of crypto finance ideas

The forum will officially kick off at 9:30 a.m. on February 12, 2026 at the University of Hong Kong. ME Group CEO Jessica Yang and Bakkt Chief Operating Officer Nicolas Baes will be the first to deliver speeches, opening a macro-prelude to this financial dialogue spanning East and West. The opening conversation that followed was personally led by Professor Wang Yang, vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong. Together with WLFI co-founder Zak Folkman, Chase Herro, and growth leader Ryan Fang, an in-depth analysis of the new paradigm of the embedded ecosystem and financial infrastructure of stablecoins.

The middle section of the agenda will focus on the core proposition “Bridging TradFi and Digital Assets: The Institutional Path Forward,” with Gary Yang, partner of CICADA as academic moderator, leading an in-depth discussion on the path to institutional advancement. A number of business executives from Pando Group, OSL Group, Amber Premium, Guofu Quantum, and Web3 Labs will gather in a 45-minute roundtable discussion to unravel how traditional financial institutions can cross the gap of perception and technology under an increasingly mature compliance framework, build a steady path to the digital asset world, and show the deep integration from academic theory to market practice. Immediately after that, Kong Jianping, Director of Hong Kong Cyberport and Chairman of Nano Labs, and Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman of HashKey Group, will successively deliver major keynote speeches, bringing participants forward-looking insights from the next stage of Web3 evolution to a panoramic outlook on the industry.

The finale of the forum focused on the popular Web3 infrastructure and conducted an in-depth discussion. Hosted by You Yang, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong and CBDC expert member of the HKMA, we had a conversation with Adam, Asia Pacific Head of the Solana Foundation, and Qiu Kai, Web3 Solution Architect at Tencent Cloud to discuss what “great infrastructure” is under the Web3 wave. Afterwards, the event entered a highly critical roundtable forum. Under the guidance of CoinFoundation founder Horace Peng, industry leaders from Asseto, TON Foundation, Antalpha RWA Hub, OneAsset, and DMZ will debate competition and cooperation between regulated entities and unlicensed DeFi to explore who will lead the next wave of value added to the asset chain. The entire event aims to provide clear and profound footnotes on the evolution of crypto finance in 2026 through this series of high-intensity confrontations of ideas.

Core Highlights: Reshaping cognitive top-level domains at inflection points of change

At a historic inflection point where the digital asset industry is accelerating towards institutionalization and compliance, the Crypto Finance Forum aims to present participants with a top Asian dialogue that combines academic rigor with practical commercial value. We are not limited to superficial trend discussions, but are committed to in-depth analysis of the current panoramic landscape of the crypto world, from the new paradigm of stablecoins reconstructing financial infrastructure to the game between traditional giants and native innovation in the RWA 2.0 circuit, to accurately capture the key pulses and macro opportunities in the evolution of the industry in the midst of complex market noise.

It was also a feast of ideas that crossed cognitive boundaries, bringing together authoritative insights from academic experts at the University of Hong Kong to leading figures in the Web3 industry. By listening to the deep collision between academia and industry, you will be able to grasp the latest institutional practice strategies under the compliance framework and explore in depth the leading application cases in the chain world. The event aims to greatly shorten the distance between cutting-edge academic research and the implementation of actual institutions, and help participants to reshape decision-making logic from a multi-dimensional perspective and seize future opportunities in the midst of rapidly changing financial changes.

summed

On February 12, 2026, let's meet at the University of Hong Kong for this premier event redefining the boundaries of crypto finance. The forum was joined by WLFI, Bakkt, HKU School of Economics and Management Senior Management Education and ME Group. It was not only a cross-border dialogue connecting Eastern and Western capital with academic wisdom, but also a deep restructuring of the Web3 industry landscape in a new era of compliance. From the underlying logic of stablecoins to the ultimate game of RWA 2.0, we look forward to working with you on a wave of change to decode the next golden decade of digital assets.