Asia-Pacific FinTech Month 2022 - Virtual Assets

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology.

He is Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, creator of the world's first cryptocurrency index fund. In that role, he helps create the index methodologies that underlie Bitwise’s investment products, and conducts fundamental research into the role cryptoassets can play in a diversified portfolio.

A three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable, Hougan was previously CEO of ETF.com, where he helped create the first institutionally oriented ETF classification and ratings system. Hougan led the sale of that business in three transactions to FactSet, BATS, and Informa, in 2015 and 2016.

He was also Chairman and CEO of Inside ETFs, the world’s largest ETF conference, where he helped guide efforts to educate financial advisors on the role ETFs and index-based investments can play in building efficient portfolios.

Hougan’s thoughts on investing have been widely profiled in the media, including in Barron’s, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Institutional Investor, CNBC, and the Financial Times. He is co-author of two publications for the CFA Institute Research Foundation: “A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds,” published in 2015, and “Cryptoasset: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies For Professional Investors.” A crypto columnist for Forbes, Hougan has been featured on Bloomberg’s “Masters of Business.”


Hougan serves on the Board of Directors of Equbot, creator of the world’s first artificial-intelligence-driven family of ETFs, is a co-founder of Advisor Circle, a product studio for growth-oriented financial advisors, and is a strategic advisor to a number of firstm, including Blockworks and StratiFi.

He graduated from Bowdoin College with a B.A. in philosophy.

Marco Lim has over 14 years of experience overseeing electronic sales and trading operations in institutional fixed income, commodities, currencies with major financial institutions. Prior to joining MaiCapital, a Hong Kong licensed virtual asset fund manager. He was the Head of North Asia Fixed Income, Commodities, Currencies electronic distribution for Goldman Sachs Asia LLC. Mr. Lim is the co-fund manager for Blockchain Opportunity Fund and the fund manager for the Bitcoin Plus Investment Fund.

Mr. I-Cheng Liu (IC Liu) is a Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School alumnus, he received his B.A in Business Administration from National Taiwan University and MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is the Chairman of the Wharton Taiwan Alumni Club and the Honorary Director of CFA Society Taiwan. His last well-known position was the General Manager of the NEXT Bank. Prior to that, he has served as the Chief Innovation Officer at the CTBC Financial Holding Corporation, CEO (Cards and Payment Division ) of CTBC Bank, Chairman of EasyCard Corporation, the Corporate/Consumer Banking Head of Cathay United Bank, Senior Vice President of Cathay Financial Holdings, and Vice President of JPMorgan Investment Banking Division. He has worked in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei, and visited 31 home stadiums of Major League Baseball. He is also a film investor and a feature writer for several magazines in Taiwan. Currently he is a self-employed entrepreneur who infuses his work and life with his passion toward culture, art, sports, and finance.

Jo has been in Asia for 25 years and has held senior Asia Pacific wide management positions, successfully leading sales, business development, marketing, and client relationship management divisions; and has both built and managed large and effective regionally located teams.

Jo was expatriated to Hong Kong with Morgan Stanley and has worked for several global institutions including HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Triple A Partners. Jo’s roles have covered intermediary, buy and sell side as well as entrepreneurial groups, and now is Managing Director, Asia Pacific for the CAIA Association.

Jo enjoys the reputation of being hard-working, capable, committed, and commercial; is a seasoned presenter and sought out moderator, regularly contributing to leading forums addressing topical aspects of the financial services sector, with a particular focus on the Asia Pacific private markets landscape. Jo was a founding executive committee member of AIMA Hong Kong and now sits on its Education Committee, and holds corporate and NFP advisory board directorships, is a Fellow of Singapore University of Social Sciences and is an advisory council member of UPACA Gurukul (India).

Prof. Raymond Tsang is currently an Associate Professor of Practice at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (“CUHK”) and a Founding Fellow of the CUHK’s Engineering FinTech Applied Research Academy.
Alongside teaching in the areas of financial engineering and financial technology, he also provides career advice for students, as well as performing liaison work connecting the finance industry and academia. Before joining the academic world, Raymond was a rate derivatives trader at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, BNY Mellon, Susquehanna International Group and Bank of Canada. He has covered markets in Canada, the United States and the APAC region.
Raymond received his Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Management Information System from McGill University, and a Master of Science in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. He is a CFA Charterholder and a Financial Risk Manager (FRM). Raymond is also a Hong Kong Football Association License D football coach and is actively involved in other sports activities.

Bryan Ventura is an expert in FinTech and Web3 (cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DeFi and blockchain) and their regulation, advising blockchain and crypto businesses and platforms since 2017. He is a senior associate at MinterEllisonRuddWatts and the current Chair of BlockchainNZ. He is also a Council Member of the International Digital Asset Exchange Association (IDAXA).