Henry Chen, global head of fintech, is no stranger to the conference circuit. He has spent years meeting with blockchain executives and professionals around the world, including major financial and technology hubs like Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco.
“Each city views the future of blockchain and digital assets from a slightly different perspective,” Chen said.
What sets Chen apart from most of the crowd is what he does once the lights come on. Its mission is to create long-term opportunities for founders, investors, developers and institutions. He believes the industry evolves more quickly when these groups collaborate instead of operating in silos.
Henry Chen Kucoin is a 15-year veteran in the investment banking and digital asset markets. He held senior positions at Goldman Sachs, UBS, Summer Capital and KU Holdings Group before founding Swiss Digital Labs, a consulting firm that helps crypto companies, blockchain foundations and fintech companies establish cross-border partnerships.
Most recently, he took on a second role as Chief Commercial Officer of SNZ Holding, where he helped create the ETH Hong Kong Hub, Asia’s first permanent physical headquarters for the Ethereum community. This dual perspective – negotiator and community builder – has led him to participate in dozens of events this year and to refine his reading of how each city approaches the same technology differently.
Hong Kong is building institutional-grade regulated infrastructure and using policies to attract builders and serious capital into a long-term ecosystem, Chen said, while working to promote smarter payment networks and inclusive finance as the region’s fintech hub. New York filters the same technology through global capital markets, compliance and product structuring. San Francisco remains where the most experimental ideas first take shape, shaped by Silicon Valley’s product culture and its current fixation on agentic, decentralized AI.
“What’s emerging across all three cities is that blockchain finance is increasingly looking like the next generation of fintech,” said Chen, an ecosystem connector whose work extends far beyond conferences and speaking engagements.
“The infrastructure is still in its early stages, but the direction is clear. »
Spotting this trend in three cities is the easy part for Chen. The hardest work, he explains, begins once the panel is over and the room is empty.
Build the room, not just attendHenry Chen’s clearest example of this work after the panel is in West Kowloonwhere the ETH Hong Kong Hub officially opened in April 2026.
The event was billed as Asia’s first permanent physical home for the Ethereum community. The hub is supported by the Ethereum Everywhere team of the Ethereum Foundation and cooperated by SNZ Holding and ETHTAO. Its inauguration attracted more than 1,500 registrants, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Foundation President Aya Miyaguchi, and Hong Kong Legislative Council member Duncan Chiu.
However, Chen said openness was never the issue. It was evidence of a demand for something that conferences cannot provide.
“In-person meetings are where the most meaningful ideas emerge in unexpected ways,” Chen said. “Informal conversations reveal where capital is moving, where founders are adjusting their strategies, and where institutions are becoming more engaged. This cannot be replicated by online comments alone.”
In an industry where attending panels and appearing at conferences is often mistaken for contribution, Chen said he wanted to build something that would have more staying power than a single event.
The hub’s first major programming session took place in March 2026, a month before its official inauguration. The event brought together speakers from the Ethereum Foundation, Spark, Hubble AI, Unified Labs and Asseto Finance for sessions on artificial intelligence, real-world assets and decentralized finance. Its initial members now include over 30 ecosystem participants, from protocol developers to institutional investors exploring on-chain markets for the first time.
“Online discussions are helpful in terms of speed and reach,” Chen said. “But in-person events provide a much clearer read of conviction, seriousness and intention. Face-to-face conversations reveal whether people are truly building, whether an institution is truly engaged, and whether a market theme has real depth behind it.”
Henry Chen Kucoin: “This signals that the industry is entering a more structural phase”Henry Chen believes in substance rather than spectacle; in fact, it shapes how he talks about the tokenization of real-world assets, a theme that has dominated recent RWA Day sessions and ETHConf discussions across the industry.
During his tenure overseeing capital markets and RWA business development at KU Holdings Group, Chen built a pipeline spanning money market funds, private equity, commodities and yield stablecoins – designing paths from origination through private placement and stock exchange listing. This experience taught him where tokenization efforts tend to stall and what to do to get past the sticking point.
“Early tokenization efforts often stopped at issuance,” Chen said. “The work now is to make these assets tradable, auditable and usable as collateral in both CeFi and DeFi. »
He said the industry only moves to practical implementation when institutions structure products that fit within existing legal and risk frameworks, rather than treating compliance as an afterthought.
“When big asset managers and big banks commit real resources to these products, the conversation shifts from ‘if’ to ‘how’ and ‘when’,” Chen said.
This shift, Chen said, tends to surface in the same kind of unhurried follow-up conversations that define his approach to events in general.
“When asset managers, banks, exchanges and Web3 builders discuss how to integrate traditional assets on-chain, design sustainable yield and liquidity models, and make user experience and compliance work at scale, it signals that the industry is entering a more structural phase,” he said.
Where AI, capital and discipline meetHenry Chen Kucoin has also seen artificial intelligence move from a side conversation to a major topic at almost every gathering he attends, and he has resisted treating it as a separate track from blockchain.
“AI improves productivity, while blockchain improves the way the economic system interacts and operates by making ownership, incentives and coordination more transparent and programmable,” Chen said.
This framework is reflected in the way he evaluates the founders and projects he meets on the circuit. Chen said the market has become less patient with narrative alone, and that the projects that actually catch the attention of experienced investors share a common thread.
“The most exciting opportunities generally emerge where strategy, timing and real utility align,” Chen said. “Projects that stand out usually seem inevitable and not fashionable. »
He applies the same discipline to his own investment philosophy at SNZ, where he says the company avoids following short-term trends and prefers to back harder, longer-term bets.
“The philosophy has always been to support difficult but right things in the long term,” Chen explained. “We’re not looking to skirt trends. We’re more interested in real-world on-chain applications, whether in fintech, payments, AI, content, or other use cases that can create lasting value.”
What’s next for global director Henry ChenHenry Chen’s next chapter feels less like a speaking tour and more like a construction project. He wants to spend the coming years working directly alongside founders rather than advising them from a distance, helping them translate technical ideas into products people actually use and helping institutions move beyond curiosity to active participation.
“The goal is not just to invest in founders remotely, but to work with them as a true partner and co-builder,” Chen explained. “Founders often need more than capital. They need confidence that their ideas can actually come to fruition without unnecessary trial and error.”
This mindset is already visible in West Kowloon, where the success of the ETH HK Hub will be measured not by its opening night guest list but by what happens on a regular Tuesday a few months from now.
Chen said the real test is whether founders keep coming back, whether developers find collaborators, and whether institutions feel more comfortable with on-chain finance because they now have a consistent place to do it.
Panels will continue in Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco. The badges will continue to come off until the end of the night. For Chen, the story never ended there.
This is where his part begins.
“Having everyone together also speeds up decision-making,” Chen explained. “Instead of letting ideas bounce around in isolation for months, stakeholders can test hypotheses in real time, build trust more quickly, and identify areas where collaboration is actually feasible. It’s also increasingly important to bring the right people together not for pure social interaction, but for business collaboration. The market is increasingly results-driven, so the value of this space lies in whether it helps create real partnerships, real execution, and real results.”
