Beyond Conferences: How Henry Chen Turns Industry Conversations into Long-Term Collaborations

Global fintech executive Henry Chen knows the conference circuit well. He has spent years meeting blockchain leaders and experts around the world, including major financial and technology hubs such as Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco.

“Each city looks at the future of blockchain and digital assets through a slightly different lens,” Chen said.

What separates Chen from most of the crowd is what he does when the lights come on. He is on a mission to create long-term opportunities for founders, investors, developers and institutions. He believes the industry moves faster when those groups work together instead of working in silos.

Henry Chen Kucoin is a 15-year investment veteran in the investment markets and digital asset markets. He held senior roles at Goldman Sachs, UBS, Summer Capital and KU Holdings Group before founding Swiss Digital Labs, an advisory firm helping crypto ventures, blockchain foundations and fintech companies build cross-border partnerships.

Most recently, he took on a second role as chief operating officer of SNZ Holding, where he helped set up the ETH Hong Kong Hub, Asia’s first permanent home for the Ethereum community. That double point – entrepreneur and community builder – has taken him to many events this year and sharpened his learning about how each city deals with the same technology.

Hong Kong is building a regulated, institutional-level infrastructure and policy to attract large developers and investors to the long-term ecosystem, Chen said, while also pushing for smart payment networks and inclusive finance as the region’s fintech hub. New York filters similar expertise in global capital markets, regulatory compliance and product planning. San Francisco remains the place where many experimental ideas first took shape, formed the product culture of Silicon Valley and its current fixation on agency AI and decentralized AI.

“What stands out in all three cities is that on-chain finance looks like the next generation of fintech,” said Chen, an ecosystem connector whose work goes beyond conferences and discussions.

“The infrastructure is still in the early stages, but the direction is clear.”

Seeing that pattern across the three cities is the easy part for Chen. The hard work, he explains, begins after the panel is finished and the room is finished.

Creating a Room, Not Just Walking Into It

Henry Chen’s clear example of such behind-the-scenes work is in West Kowloon, where the ETH Hong Kong Hub was officially opened in April 2026.

The event is billed as Asia’s first permanent home for the Ethereum community. The hub is supported by the Ethereum Foundation’s Ethereum Everywhere group and is partnered with SNZ Holding and ETHTAO. Its grand opening attracted more than 1,500 registrants, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Foundation President Aya Miyaguchi and Hong Kong Legislative Council member Duncan Chiu.

However, Chen said the opening was never the point. It was a testament to the need for something that conferences could not provide.

“Personal gatherings are where the most meaningful insights come out of nowhere,” Chen said. “Informal conversations reveal where money is flowing, when founders are adjusting their strategies, and when institutions are most busy. That can’t be replicated with online analysis alone.”

In an industry where attending panels and appearing at conferences is often mistaken for contribution, Chen said he wanted to create something more powerful than a single event.

The first major planning session for the hub was held in March 2026, a month before its official official opening. The event brought together speakers from the Ethereum Foundation, Spark, Hubble AI, Integrated Labs and Asseto Finance for sessions on artificial intelligence, real-world assets and decentralized finance. Its initial membership now includes more than 30 ecosystem participants, from protocol developers to institutional investors exploring on-chain markets for the first time.

“Online chats are useful for speed and reach,” Chen said. “But human events provide a clearer reading about confidence, sincerity, and purpose. Face-to-face conversations reveal whether people are truly constructive, whether the institution is truly committed, and whether the theme of the market has real depth behind it.”

Henry Chen Kucoin: ‘It Shows The Industry Is Entering A More Structural Phase’

Henry Chen believes in substance over spectacle; in fact, it drives home the way he talks about real-world asset tokens, a theme that has dominated recent RWA Day sessions and ETHConf discussions across the industry.

During his time overseeing capital markets and RWA business development at KU Holdings Group, Chen built a pipeline that includes money market funds, private equity, commodities and yield-generating stablecoins – designing pathways from founding through private placements and exchange listings. That experience taught him where tokenization efforts tend to stall, and what it takes to get through the sales floor.

“Early attempts to create tokens often stall at issuance,” Chen said. “Now the work is about making these assets tradable, readable, and usable as collateral across CeFi and DeFi.”

He said the industry is moving towards practical implementation only when institutions develop products that comply with existing regulations and risk frameworks, instead of treating compliance as an afterthought.

“When major asset managers and banks create real services for these products, it shifts the conversation from ‘if’ to ‘how’ and ‘when,'” Chen said.

That change, Chen says, often comes from the same kind of slow, one-on-one conversations that define his approach to events in general.

“When asset managers, banks, exchanges, and Web3 developers discuss how to bring traditional assets to the chain, how to design sustainable yield and liquidity models, and how to optimize user experience and compliance, it shows that the industry is entering a phase of organization,” he said.

Where AI, Capital and Discipline meet

Henry Chen Kucoin has also watched artificial intelligence move from a side discussion to a topic at almost every gathering he attends, and he has refused to treat it as a different song than blockchain.

“AI improves productivity, while blockchain improves how the economic system interacts and operates by making ownership, incentives, and communication transparent and organized,” Chen said.

That framework carries over into the way he examines the founders and projects he encounters on the circuit. Chen said that the market has grown slowly in the narrative alone, and the projects that are getting real attention from experienced investors share a common thread.

“The strongest opportunities often emerge when strategy, time, and real-world resources align,” Chen said. “Projects that stand out often feel inevitable, unfashionable.”

He applies the same discipline to his investment philosophy at SNZ, where he says the company avoids chasing short-term trends in favor of strong, long-term bets.

“The philosophy has been supporting something that is hard but right for a long time,” Chen said. “We’re not looking to trade trends. We’re more interested in real applications that are available online, be it fintech, payments, AI, content, or other use cases that can create lasting value.”

Next up is Global Executive Henry Chen

Henry Chen’s next chapter looks less like a speaking tour and more like a construction project. He wants to spend the next few years working directly with innovators rather than advising from afar, helping to translate technical ideas into products people actually use and helping institutions move past curiosity into participation.

“The goal is not just to invest in remote founders, but to work with them as a true partner and co-builder,” Chen said. “Innovators often need more than money. They need confidence that their ideas can be realized without unnecessary trial and error.”

That concept is already evident in West Kowloon, where the success of the ETH HK Hub will not be measured by its opening night guest list but by what happens on a typical Tuesday months from now.

Chen said the real test is whether founders keep coming back, whether developers find partners and whether institutions grow more comfortable with on-chain finance because they now have a consistent place to do it.

Panels will continue to take place in Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco. Badges will continue to be issued at the end of the night. For Chen, that’s never where the story ends.

This is where his part of it begins.

“Having everyone together speeds up decision-making,” Chen explained. “Instead of ideas remaining isolated for months, participants can test assumptions in real time, build trust very quickly, and identify where cooperation is possible. It is becoming more and more important to bring the right people together not for the sake of pure cooperation, but business cooperation. The market is very driven by results, so the value of the room lies in whether it helps to create a real partnership, a real result.”