Xinhuo Group CEO Weng Xiaoqi's keynote speech at the World Financial Forum: Integrating AI into Web3 will become the foundation of digital finance in the new era

ME News Report, May 22 (UTC+8), yesterday (May 21) --- Xinhuo Group (01611.HK) CEO Livio Weng delivered a keynote speech at the 9th World Financial Forum Annual Meeting and Intercontinental Dialogue 2026 in Hong Kong, proposing that the deep integration of AI and Web3 will give rise to a brand new "Web4" world.

In his speech, Weng pointed out that the industry’s true large-scale development is still gathering momentum, with four major forces driving the industry from the accumulation phase to the outbreak phase: compliance promotion, traditional assets on-chain, AI capital inflows, and involvement of national-level institutions. He emphasized that the integration of AI and Crypto is an inherently organic combination—AI is code, and Crypto is also code. With the rise of AI, Crypto will迎来 a huge development opportunity.

When discussing the current state of Web3 development, Weng noted that the industry faces a dilemma: many people are discussing encryption, but few hold digital assets through personal wallets, mainly due to high operational barriers. He believes that AI inherently has the ability to manage digital wallets, and in the future, the relationship between AI and humans will go through three stages—initially as a tool for humans to gather information, mid-term as an independent consciousness and assistant function, and long-term possibly even dominating social order. Meanwhile, Crypto will迎来 a new wave of explosion alongside the rise of AI.

Looking ahead to 2027, Weng made several industry predictions. He believes that the total scale of digital asset ETFs could double to $200 billion, assets of over 1,000 banks will be fully on-chain, and the annual growth rate of stablecoins will remain above 66%. He predicts that over 20% of commercial AI Agents will adopt stablecoins for automated payments and settlements, more than 30% of leading global banks will consider offering crypto services to clients, the proportion of institutions’ crypto asset allocations will increase from less than 1% to 3-5%, and new national sovereign currency funds will officially include crypto assets on their balance sheets.

Weng stated that Xinhuo Group’s mission is to bridge the last mile for financial institutions entering Web4—completing all complex links such as trading, custody, and asset management, becoming a loyal industry partner. Xinhuo Group will also continue to rely on comprehensive compliance qualifications and professional financial service strength, deeply cultivate compliant digital financial services, work hand in hand with global financial institutions, and break down the barriers between traditional and digital finance, safeguarding the industry’s steady and orderly development, and jointly advancing a new journey of high-quality development in digital finance in the Web4 era. (Source: Xinhuo Group)