The HSC Conference, a premier event dedicated to bridging institutional finance and cryptocurrency, concluded in Seoul on October 1. Hosted by Mpost Media Group in partnership with Z Venture, the gathering brought together leaders from financial institutions, crypto investment funds, and technology companies.

More than 50 industry professionals took the stage to examine the forces shaping the next phase of digital finance, spanning investment, market structure, and the convergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence. The program carried a pronounced Asia-Pacific focus, reflecting the region's growing role in the global digital asset landscape.

Speakers and attendees assessed major industry developments throughout the event, including the evolution of stablecoins and tokenization, the emergence of blockchain-based financial infrastructure, and expanding institutional adoption of digital assets. Sessions covered: Investments Today; Financial Infrastructure in the Digital Economy; Infrastructure: Building Web3's Rails; Institutional Adoption of Digital Assets; Welcome to the Trillion-Dollar Agentic Economy; Tokenization: The RWA Opportunity; Stablecoins: The New Global Rails; Beyond Chain Boundaries: The Next Layer of DeFi; Agentic AI: Infrastructure, Payments, and Beyond; and Mainstream Web3 Adoption. Read together, the agenda mapped the emerging architecture of digital finance, from payment rails and market infrastructure to machine-driven commerce.

Program Highlights

The panel “Institutional Adoption of Digital Assets” examined the factors shaping institutional capital allocation and the developments accelerating digital asset adoption. The discussion featured Wenny Ow, APAC Lead at IBM Digital Asset; Matthew Dawson, Co-Founder of Ethereum Institutional; John Cahill, COO Asia at Galaxy Digital; Charles Jansen, Managing Director of DeFi and Digital Assets at S&P Global; Henson Orser, Founder & CEO of Soter Insure; and Mike Silagadze, Founder & CEO of Ether.fi. The breadth of the panel — spanning enterprise technology, credit ratings, trading, insurance, and DeFi — illustrated how digital asset adoption now cuts across the financial services stack.

The session “Stablecoins: The New Global Rails” brought together Chris Mihos, Co-Founder & CEO of makebanc; Brian Mehler, CEO of Stable; Anthony Koo, Head of Payments at StraitsX; Jiyeon Park, APAC Lead at Steakhouse Financial; Queenie Le, Regional Expansion Lead, APAC at Tether; and Leila Mcharek, CEO & Founder of Izora Capital. The discussion centered on the role of stablecoins in global payments, how money moves across markets, and the barriers to wider adoption.

A dedicated segment addressed the agentic AI economy, connecting the event's two central threads of blockchain infrastructure and artificial intelligence. The panel “Welcome to the Trillion-Dollar Agentic Economy” featured Yat Siu, Chairman & Co-Founder of Animoca Brands; Ed Felten, Co-Founder of Offchain Labs; and Michael Heinrich, Co-Founder & CEO of Zero Gravity Labs. Moderated by Francesco Andreoli, Director of DevRel at MetaMask, the conversation explored what AI agents need to transact autonomously and the infrastructure required to support the emerging agentic economy.

The conference's highlight was a keynote by Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom and CEO of FLOP Labs, who introduced FLOP as a new economic layer for autonomous AI agents. Hayes proposed a spot market for compute denominated in FLOP and outlined the project's ambition to surpass Bitcoin.

Participants and Sponsors

The event drew leading financial institutions, investment firms, and digital asset companies, including C² Ventures, Portal Ventures, Canary Capital, Maelstrom, Arcadia, Z Venture, Bybit, Ledger Enterprise, Bitstamp by Robinhood, MetaMask, CoinMarketCap, ZKsync, Monad Foundation, Base, Sonic Labs, QR Wallet, Dash, IBM Digital Asset, Ethereum Institutional, Galaxy Digital, S&P Global, Soter Insure, Ether.fi, Zero Gravity Labs, Animoca Brands, Offchain Labs, Turtle, RedStone Atom Finance, Hypernative, Dfns, Hashgraph, makebanc, Stable, StraitsX, Steakhouse Financial, Tether, Izora Capital, STON.fi, My AI PET, Velvet, Rewardy Wallet, AEON, TiDB by PingCAP, AutoLinta, Bond, BNB Chain, Cactus Custody, and Nethermind.

Credit Scend and Everwood Capital supported HSC Conference Seoul as title sponsors. Gold sponsors included QR Wallet, Sonic Labs, Mercuryo, STON.fi, Interlace, Addressable, Hypernative, Battle Town, My AI PET, Velvet, Ledger Enterprise, TiDB by PingCAP, Fomoscan, Izora Capital, AEON, AutoLinta, and Rewardy Wallet. Community partners were Coineasy, Akindo, Four Pillars, and CryptoJobsList, while media partners included MarketAcross, Pivot, Cointelegraph, Foresight News, CoinGape, and others.

Beyond the stage, the conference fostered an active networking environment where participants connected with global and regional capital, engaged with projects selected for institutional readiness, explored partnership and market-entry opportunities across Asia-Pacific, and built relationships with institutions shaping the future of digital assets.

From Ho Chi Minh City to Seoul: Scaling the Institutional Crypto Dialogue

The Seoul edition built on the HSC Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, where discussions focused on moving blockchain from pilots to real financial infrastructure, scaling institutional digital asset adoption, and closing the gap between mature Web3 infrastructure and mainstream markets. The Seoul gathering drew more than 2,000 attendees for the next chapter of the conversation on digital assets and global capital markets.

Over the past three years, HSC Conference and HSC Asset Management have developed into two complementary event series. HSC Conference convenes innovators, investors, asset managers, policymakers, and industry leaders to discuss the evolution of digital assets and financial infrastructure, while HSC Asset Management provides a more focused setting for investment, fundraising, and dealmaking. Together, the two series have welcomed more than 100,000 attendees and generated more than 10 million social media impressions.

Upcoming editions are scheduled in Singapore on October 8, Dubai in November, and Abu Dhabi in December — a run that carries the same conversations through three financial hubs within a single quarter.