Isola in Asia for blockchain events

Albert Isola, the Minister for Commerce, delivered the keynote speech at a blockchain seminar organised by Huobi Group last week in Beijing.

From Beijing Mr Isola travelled to Hong Kong where he attended a number of pre-arranged commercial appointments and media engagements.

The ‘Discover Gibraltar with Huobi’ event took place at the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing and gave a thorough insight into Gibraltar’s evolving Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) ecosystem and supportive regulatory environment.

Mr Isola said: “We are grateful to the Huobi Group for the opportunity to engage with a large and knowledgeable audience on blockchain regulation and its future development.”

“I must thank our hosts, the Huobi Group, for the time and effort we know they committed to ensuring this event was supported by blockchain professionals and founders of Chinese fintech businesses as well as senior academics.”

The Huobi seminar included panel sessions on blockchain regulation and fintech development with a number of prominent Chinese blockchain academics from various leading Chinese Universities and professionals participating in the discussions.

Joey Garcia of ISOLAS, Huobi Gibraltar’s legal advisor, participated in both panel sessions.

Huobi Group is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges and was established in Beijing in 2013, offering clients digital asset trading and asset management services.

With operations established worldwide, Huobi is one of the largest exchanges operating in the blockchain industry and has established compliance service teams across the globe to ensure a customer-centric approach.

The seminar provided an opportunity to share the Gibraltar experience with the Chinese business audience, detailing the jurisdiction’s financial services sector, supportive DLT regulations and its fast expanding fintech sector.

Mr Isola was accompanied by Gibraltar Finance senior executives Michael Ashton and Paul Astengo.

“Today represents Gibraltar’s latest significant engagement with Huobi on the DLT front, after the company was awarded a full DLT licence from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) in November 2018. The stage is now set for further exciting collaborations,” Mr Isola added.

His schedule in Hong Kong included an invitation to attend and speak at a private lunch at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel organized by the Gibraltar Stock Exchange Group (“GSX”).

The lunch was hosted by Ben Soh, Executive Director (Asia) of GSX and provided an opportunity to meet a number of the senior management team of GSX and its subsidiary the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (“GBX”) who are based in Hong Kong and learn more of their plans for the growth of their various businesses.

Mr Isola said: “I was delighted to attend and speak at the GSX lunch and to have the opportunity to meet with key business partners and customers of the GSX Group as they continue to expand their operations in the Asia region.”

He added: “I welcomed the opportunity to meet with the senior leadership of GSX before the lunch. They are a major player in Gibraltar’s financial services and DLT network of licensed firms and I am greatly encouraged to understand, in particular, that GBX’s STACS Network is gaining real traction with numerous case studies and discussions currently taking place with their clients and other prospects to use the STACS protocol and its Blockchain ecosystem for digital assets.”