Key personnel responsible for digital asset operations at global asset management firms, custodial institutional investors, and credit rating agencies will attend 'KBW2026 with Upbit' to be held in Seoul this September.
On the 1st, KBW2026 organizer FactBlock announced that speakers confirmed include Chetan Karkhanis, Senior Vice President of Franklin Templeton Digital Asset Client Strategy; Alvin Chia, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Asset Innovation for Northern Trust Asia-Pacific; and Jin Fang, Executive Director at Moody's Ratings.
Franklin Templeton is a global asset management firm with assets under management totaling 1.8 trillion won (approximately 2,500 trillion won). In 2021, it launched the first product among U.S.-registered mutual funds to utilize public blockchain as a transaction processing and share record system. Recently, it has been advancing a business that utilizes tokenized money market funds as collateral for digital asset trading by institutional investors.
Alvin Chia, Senior Vice President of Northern Trust, which manages custodial and administered assets reaching 20 trillion won (approximately 28,000 trillion won) as of the end of June this year, will appear as a speaker. As Senior Vice President, Chia is responsible for developing financial infrastructure leveraging blockchain and tokenization in the Asia-Pacific region.
Jin Fang, Executive Director at global credit rating agency Moody's, will also take the stage. Moody's recently unveiled a system capable of providing its own credit ratings and credit analysis information to blockchain-based financial infrastructure. Previously, Charles Jansen, Managing Director overseeing S&P Global's transition to decentralized finance (DeFi), also confirmed his participation as a speaker.
Thomas Sai, Managing Director and Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at New York Life Investment Management, and Ryo Kato, General Manager at SBI Securities, will also attend. Sai oversees global investment strategies and digital asset solutions worth over $11 billion (approximately 15 trillion won). SBI Securities has previously demonstrated a tokenized securities trading structure between brokerages utilizing Ethereum and the stablecoin USDC.
Additionally, John D'Agostino, Head of Institutional Investor Strategy at Coinbase; Mike Belshe, Co-founder and CEO of BitGo; Hong Kim, Co-founder and CTO of Bitwise Asset Management; and Yuvraj Luthra, Co-founder and CEO of Digital Assets, will participate as speakers.
KBW2026 will be held at the Walkerhill Hotel & Resort in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul. On the opening day, September 29, an 'Upbit Institutional Summit' will take place for institutional investors and designated attendees, followed by the main conference from September 30 to October 1.
Park Wi-ik, CEO of FactBlock, stated, "Blockchain initiatives in the financial sector have moved beyond technical validation to a stage where core functions such as products, custody, and credit rating information are being connected on-chain." He added, "Global financial institutional investors and digital asset companies will discuss the next direction for institutional investor finance."
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