Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026 (2-6 November): Anchorpoint and HSBC headline the stablecoin agenda

Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026 runs from 2 to 6 November, held jointly with the StartmeupHK festival, and the organiser has now put the programme of its main conference online. Those two days, 2 and 3 November, take place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). On both of them the Digital Assets and Web3 Forum holds Hall 5FG, with 32 slots on stablecoins, tokenised bonds and funds, custody and trading.

The session to circle is on 2 November at 16:35 Hong Kong time (08:35 UTC). It puts Dominic Maffei, chief executive of Anchorpoint, on the same panel as John O’Neill of HSBC. Their two companies hold the only stablecoin issuer licences Hong Kong has granted so far.

This is still a general fintech week, not a crypto conference. The main conference has ten forums, and the others cover AI, insurance, green finance and startups. The Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau and InvestHK are among the organisers, Finoverse runs the event, and the HKMA, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the Insurance Authority are co-organisers.

Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026 agenda: the Digital Assets and Web3 Forum

The forum page gives three themes: regulated stablecoins and digital fiat, the tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA), and AI agents running on Web3 infrastructure. On 21 October the page still said “Agenda Coming Soon”. The full agenda now lists sessions from 10:20 to 17:05 on 2 November and from 10:20 to 16:50 on 3 November. All times below are Hong Kong time (UTC+8).

The first day leans towards banks and the HKMA. At 10:50 a panel on Project Ensemble, the HKMA’s tokenisation project, brings together BlackRock, China Asset Management (Hong Kong), HSBC and Standard Chartered, moderated by HKMA fintech director Danny Chau. According to the session description, banks have used tokenised deposits for corporate treasury and to invest in a tokenised money market fund since the EnsembleTX platform launched in November 2025.

At 12:10 the tokenised bond panel starts from the government’s four rounds of digital green bonds. Georgina Jarratt of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) sits on it with HSBC and Standard Chartered, and Georgina Lok of the HKMA moderates. Elizabeth Wong, who heads the SFC’s fintech unit for intermediaries, has a fireside chat at 13:25, then moderates a panel on corporate crypto treasuries with Standard Chartered, Ripple and China Asset Management (Hong Kong) at 13:40. HashKey Group chairman Xiao Feng follows at 14:15.

At 15:35 “Stablecoins-as-a-Service” pairs Lewis Sun, who became HSBC’s global head of digital currencies for corporate and institutional banking in May 2026, with HashKey’s Rachel Qiu. Marieke Flament, who sits on the boards of IG Group, N26 and Qivalis, moderates. Injective Foundation chief executive Eric Chen and Ant Digital Technologies discuss tokenised commodities and derivatives at 16:05.

The stablecoin panel: Anchorpoint and HSBC six months after their licences

The Stablecoins Ordinance (Cap. 656) took effect on 1 August 2025, according to the HKMA. Since then, issuing a fiat-referenced stablecoin in the city requires a licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

The first two came on 10 April 2026. The HKMA release named Anchorpoint Financial Limited and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, and said both intended to launch business “in the coming few months”. The HKMA register lists them as licences FRS01 and FRS02 but names no coin, and we found no official launch notice.

The panel at 16:35, “Advancing on the Regulated Pathway”, is where that progress should come up. Maffei’s speaker profile describes Anchorpoint as a joint venture of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT and Animoca Brands. With him and O’Neill sit Dan Maley, BlackRock’s Asia-Pacific head of digital assets and cash management, and Melody He, deputy chief executive of CSOP Asset Management. Archie Ng, the HKMA executive director for monetary management, moderates. The agenda says the panel will review what has happened since August 2025 and the priorities from here.

Day two: legal structuring, Asian regulators and AI payments

On 3 November the forum turns to market structure. At 10:35 lawyers from Clifford Chance and King & Wood and professor Douglas Arner discuss how RWA tokens are built legally, moderated by HKMA senior fintech director Yvonne Tsui. At 11:05 Bilal Bin Saqib, Pakistan’s Minister of State and chairman of its virtual-asset regulator PVARA, joins an assistant secretary-general of Thailand’s SEC on a panel about digital-asset rules in Asia.

HashKey RWA chief executive Anna Liu gives a keynote at 14:05. At 14:15 Circle’s Hong Kong general manager Patricia Ho, Elliptic’s Arda Akartuna and Ubyx’s Nicole Sandler talk about payments made by AI agents on-chain. Benedicte Nolens, head of the BIS Innovation Hub centre in Hong Kong, moderates the 15:20 panel on why institutional tokenisation stalls after pilots. The last session, at 16:20, includes Jean-Luc Gustave of Qivalis and Flow Traders.

Two slots on 2 November, at 12:55 and 14:35, are fireside chats with no names yet.

Binance, Solana and Bybit on the main stage

The best-known crypto names are not in the digital-assets hall but in the Policy and Visionary Forum. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng (see our Binance review) has a 20-minute fireside chat in the “Global Leader Series” on 3 November at 14:50, followed at 15:10 by Bybit co-founder Ben Zhou. Former BIS general manager Agustín Carstens closes that series at 16:10.

Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, the body behind the Solana network, is on a panel on 2 November at 13:35 with Tian Gan, chief executive of China Asset Management (Hong Kong), moderated by Angelina Kwan of Stratford Finance. The agenda gives no topic for either of these sessions.

European speakers: Banque de France, FCA and the BIS

The European presence is strongest among regulators. On 2 November at 10:00 the HKMA’s Eddie Yue shares a panel on AI, tokenisation and quantum computing in finance with Denis Beau of the Banque de France, HSBC group chief executive Georges Elhedery and Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, who has headed the BIS Innovation Hub in Basel since 1 March 2026. Beau also gives a ten-minute keynote on 3 November at 9:50.

Beau is not a crypto speaker. The speakers page lists him as deputy governor; his biography says he has been first deputy governor since January 2024, chairs the French banking supervisor ACPR on the governor’s behalf and sits on the AMF board and the ECB Supervisory Board. Ashley Alder, chair of the UK Financial Conduct Authority and head of the SFC from 2011, appears with SFC chief executive Julia Leung on 2 November at 11:15.

Inside the digital-assets forum, Europeans include ICMA’s Jarratt and Nicole Sandler, a UK-based member of the European Commission’s expert group on regulatory obstacles to financial innovation. On 3 November Johannes Kern, managing director of the association behind the Swiss franc stablecoin Frankencoin, speaks at 15:50, and Hanna Raftell of Sweden’s Stratum 3 Ventures moderates a trading panel at 13:00.

For readers in Europe, the stablecoin panel is a useful comparison with MiCA, under which the EU authorises issuers of e-money tokens (our guide to MiCA explains how). Hong Kong licenses issuers through the HKMA, and after six months its register holds two names. If the topic is new to you, start with what stablecoins are.

Tickets and prices for Hong Kong FinTech Week

Prices on the official tickets page, read on 23 October 2026, are in US dollars. The early-bird rate ended on 31 May and regular rates now apply.

• The General Pass costs $719 and covers the main conference forums and the exhibition on 2 and 3 November.
• The Startup Pass costs $329, for companies founded in 2021 or later with under US$2 million in annual revenue and 50 full-time staff or fewer.
• The Investor Pass costs $1,499.
• The Executive Pass costs $2,899 and adds VIP lounges, a morning conference and lunch in Shenzhen on 4 November, and 30% off the Shenzhen tour.
• A Startup Exhibition Package at $2,199 includes a 2 sqm booth and three Startup Passes.
• The GBA Immersive Executive Tour is an $800 add-on: a conference at the Renaissance Shenzhen Bay Hotel on 4 November, four company visits, meals and coaches, but no hotel.

Government Passes are free for officials of governments, central banks, multilateral agencies and non-profit foundations. Visitor Passes give limited entry on 3 November from 9:00, including the Digital Assets and Web3 Forum. Both are by application with manual review, and admission is not guaranteed. Codes 10LASTMINPASS and 15LASTMINPASS take 10% off the General Pass for groups of 5 to 14 and 15% for 15 to 24. No registration deadline is given, and there are no euro prices.

Time difference and the Shenzhen trip

The city runs on UTC+8 with no daylight saving time. Once Europe changes its clocks on 25 October, the city is seven hours ahead of Paris and Rome and eight ahead of London, so the 16:35 stablecoin panel starts at 9:35 in Paris. The Shenzhen tour crosses into Mainland China, and the organiser asks attendees to arrange their own entry and apply for a visa at least three to four weeks before.

From 30,000 visitors in 2022 to a 45,000 target

The 2022 edition, from 31 October to 4 November, drew more than 30,000 visitors and over 500 speakers, according to a government press release. Its opening day carried the government’s policy statement on virtual assets, which announced an SFC consultation on retail access and said the HKMA would set out next steps for a stablecoin regime.

For 2026 the home page claims more than 45,000 attendees, over 1,000 speakers, more than 800 sponsors, exhibitors and startups, over 30 delegations and more than 120 economies. These are the organiser’s figures before the event, not counts.

What is still unknown

The agenda gives no subject for the Teng, Zhou and Liu sessions, and two fireside chats in the digital-assets hall have no speakers. Whether Anchorpoint or HSBC has put a stablecoin into circulation is not stated in any HKMA notice we found. The agenda can still change before 2 November.