Location: Taipei, Shangri-La Far Eastern Hotel, Lobby Cafe
Travel note: In the evening at the Lobby Cafe of Taipei's Shangri-La Far Eastern Hotel, through an introduction from senior Pat at Credit Suisse, I met IP, who previously worked at Goldman Sachs, UBS Hong Kong, and other foreign firms. IP now works at a family office under a well-known Taiwanese investment circle tycoon. IP also brought his friend Clement, who previously served as head of trading at institutions like CTBC and Cathay, with extensive experience trading forex, bonds, and commodities. I invited Tom, founder of Joyso, one of Taiwan's digital currency exchanges, so everyone could get acquainted. We explored whether new sparks could fly between the traditional and virtual finance worlds. We discussed various financial products like futures, options, warrants, forex margin, swaps, IRS, ELN (Equity Linked Notes)... Taiwan is still very small—it turned out Tom and IP had met years ago at a meeting about implementing blockchain and smart contracts for business contracts at a listed company. Also, IP's wife is from Taichung and lives just a few hundred meters from my place, so he knows the street near my home well and …
