Skip to main content

Delegates at the Huobi Group Blockchain Seminar in Beijing, June 2019

Gibraltar Finance attended the Huobi Group Blockchain Seminar in Beijing last week, with Gibraltar’s Minister for Commerce, Albert Isola, delivering the keynote speech, highlighting Gibraltar’s DLT ecosystem.

The ‘Discover Gibraltar with Huobi’ event took place at the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing on Tuesday 18th June, and gave a thorough insight into Gibraltar’s evolving Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) ecosystem and supportive regulatory environment.

Minister 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 LLP, Huobi Gibraltar’s legal advisor, participated in both panel sessions.

Huobi Group is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges that 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. Minister 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,” concluded Minister Isola.

As Gibraltar’s Minister for Commerce, Albert Isola’s primary responsibility is that of raising Gibraltar’s profile as an established onshore, mainstream, well-regulated financial services centre. A British Overseas Territory, Gibraltar is a self-governing and self-financing democracy that has established itself globally as a reliable centre for the blockchain and digital assets industry. In January 2018, Gibraltar became the very first jurisdiction globally to introduce legislation around Distributed-Ledger-Technology (DLT), and has since asserted its position as a leading blockchain and cryptocurrency hub. With Gibraltar’s core values of regulation, reputation and speed to market at the foundation of its efforts within the blockchain industry, Gibraltar is now globally renowned for its commitment to creating a sustainable and secure regulatory framework for blockchain, as well as being one of the leading proponents in the advancement of the technology.