Chen Maobo: Web3+AI reshaping transaction efficiency Facing three major challenges in the future

Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po stated at the Web3 Festival that the convergence of Web3 and AI will be a game changer, jointly elevating transaction efficiency to a new level, covering a wide range of areas including finance, trade, wealth management, supply chain operations, and logistics. This combination will create tremendous new opportunities, but at the same time also bring three major challenges that must be addressed together. The first is the speed gap. If AI can act within milliseconds, relevant infrastructure (such as payment and settlement systems) must keep pace and not wait for days or even hours. This is not just a technical issue. In the global Web3 environment, common standards and close cross-border cooperation are also required to ensure that activities can be identified, processed, and regulated in a roughly consistent manner in different jurisdictions. Second is human control and security. Autonomous AI with decision-making abilities must ensure that their behavior remains predictable, traceable, and open to human intervention. Clear guardrails are needed to ensure that humans retain control in order to detect and prevent abuse, manipulation, or systemic errors in a timely manner. Third is regulation and accountability. As AI-driven activities span across multiple platforms, products, and markets, it is crucial to ensure that regulatory and governance frameworks keep pace to protect investors, users, and consumers, and to address risks such as cybersecurity, fraud, and systemic bias. He emphasized that decentralization and digital intelligence do not mean weaker accountability or lower standards. Instead, compliance and supervision can be integrated into the financial system in a more intelligent way to strengthen overall stability. Paul Chan Mo-po mentioned that Hong Kong has issued two stablecoin issuer licenses earlier this month. Stablecoins are expected to address long-standing pain points in cross-border trade and payments. However, it must be done with the maintenance of financial system stability as a prerequisite, so the authorities are taking a cautious step-by-step approach, with a robust compliance culture and capability as a prerequisite for stablecoin issuers.