How Will the Metaverse Reshape the Business of the Internet?

michael elko

Head of Hong Kong Strategy Development

bloomberg

Michael has 16 years of experience in financial markets. He began his career within equities at an international investment bank and transitioned to Bloomberg in 2017. While in equities, he worked within a leading edge quantitative analysis platform and equities sales divsions. At Bloomberg, Michael worked in sales development across Portfolio Analytics, Index and Enterprise Sales divisions. Most recently, he transitioned to head the strategy development team in Hong Kong. One of the teams responsibilities is developing Bloomberg's Crypto product and sales strategies.

Matthew Hutchins

Co-Founder & CEO

Block Ape Scissors

Matthew is an innovative, technical and results driven leader, with extensive experience delivering cloud strategies and solutions. Having designed, provisioned and managed bleeding edge infrastructure, cloud, datacenter, service delivery, application and mobility projects for APAC SME and Enterprise over the last 17 years. Opening a new chapter Matthew acquired a Blockchain Solution Architect Certification in 2020 and Founded a Metaverse Gaming project in 2021 called Block Ape Scissors, which received strategic investment from Binance Labs as part of the Season 3 Incubation Program. Matthew is highly experienced and knowledgeable across Defi, NFTs, GameFi, Metaverse and the core fundamentals of decentralisation.

Peter DeMeo

Head of Digital Asset Infrastructure

IBM Systems

Peter globally leads IBM Systems confidential computing technology solutions for crypto assets that further secures institutional digital asset custody, exchange operations, and tokenization solutions. Peter is responsible for market development, technology roadmaps, and building sales and services infrastructure. As a certified design thinking facilitator, Peter also helps clients enhance their solution's capabilities by leveraging IBM's Hyper Protect Services on premise and on the IBM Cloud.  Peter holds a US Patent for hardened policy based transaction signing.   Peter is a regular speaker at blockchain conferences. Prior to his relocation to Asia Pacific from Washington DC in 2013, he was practice leader for Enterprise Architecture, including the divisions large scale software development efforts and IT strategy consulting for US Federal clients including the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Depository and Trust Corporation, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. He was also a contributing author to enterprise architecture publication: Coherency Management: Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance (2009).

Yat Siu

Co-Founder & Executive Chairman

Animoca Brands

A veteran technology entrepreneur/investor based in Hong Kong, Yat Siu is the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in blockchain and gaming with the mission to deliver digital property rights to the world's gamers and Internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies, and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open metaverse. Yat began his career at Atari Germany in 1990. In 1995 he moved to Hong Kong to establish Hong Kong Cybercity/Freenation, the first free web page and email provider in Asia. In 1998 he set up Outblaze, an award-winning pioneer of multilingual white label web services. In 2009, he sold Outblaze’s messaging unit to IBM, and pivoted Outblaze to become an incubator of projects and companies to develop digital entertainment services and products. Yat is a director for TurnOut Ventures, a partnership between Outblaze and Turner Entertainment that brought to prominence the hugely popular emoticon character Tuzki. In 2017 he set up the Dalton Learning Lab, an afterschool digital lab for skills not emphasized by most education systems, including divergent thinking and design thinking. He is the founder of ThinkBlaze, the research arm of Outblaze investigating socially meaningful issues in technology. Since 2018, Yat has been an early advocate for the use of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the gaming industry, which will allow gamers to enjoy true ownership of their own game assets, data, and, consequently, time. With a clear vision of the potential of decentralized apps and assets, Yat quickly steered Animoca Brands, at the time an established game developer and publisher, to focus on blockchain technology and NFTs. Since 2018, Animoca Brands has launched a series of NFT-centric products and invested in over 100 blockchain-related companies, developing one of the largest blockchain portfolios in the world. Yat has earned numerous accolades including Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the DHL/SCMP Awards, and recognition as one of the Cointelegraph top 100 notable people in blockchain in 2021. A classically trained musician, Yat is a member of the advisory board of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a director of the Asian Youth Orchestra.