In less than a year, HashKey Exchange has achieved rapid development in its business. As of August 2024, the total trading volume exceeded HKD 500 billion, with a capital sink of HKD 4.5 billion, ranking among the top 15 global exchanges and firmly holding the position of the largest licensed virtual asset exchange in Hong Kong. In a rapidly changing and rapidly emerging industry, achieving such results cannot be achieved without talent as a powerful source of motivation.

People often only see HashKey Exchange as the largest licensed virtual asset exchange in Hong Kong, but behind it is targeting the compliance track and persisting for over 7 years. In the past 7 years, HashKey Group has crossed two bull and bear cycles and obtained relevant virtual asset service licenses in multiple countries and regions around the world, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Bermuda.

In the layout of licensed compliant exchanges in Hong Kong, HashKey Exchange obtained licenses 1 and 7 issued by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission in 2022, which can provide cryptocurrency trading services in compliance with market regulations; In 2023, when the market is in a deep bear market, HashKey Exchange's licenses 1 and 7 will be upgraded to retail licenses for retail investors, allowing them to provide cryptocurrency trading services to retail investors. In 2024, HashKey Exchange successfully obtained an AMLO license, and other members of HashKey Group have obtained all the required licenses from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to provide virtual asset related services in Hong Kong according to their respective business needs, becoming a fully licensed virtual asset service unicorn enterprise.

Last year, Rain joined HashKey as the Chief Human Resources and Administrative Officer of the group, quickly promoting the transformation and upgrading of the organization and talent from the perspectives of organization and talent. After the company was granted a compliance license, in just three months from March to May 2023, the exchange business sector completed a major organizational upgrade, shifting from an organizational structure centered on license application to a service-oriented structure focused on comprehensive operation. After the exchange business gradually got on track, we provided strong support for the business and further completed the flat organizational structure upgrade of "comprehensive support for business fast running" at the group level.

Rain has over 20 years of experience in human resources management, having held senior management positions at UT Starcom, a publicly traded company in the United States, as well as serving as the Chief Human Resources Officer and General Counsel of JD.com. He led JD.com to successfully go public on NASDAQ, achieving global organizational transformation and talent promotion. Afterwards, Rain crossed over from Web2 to Web3 and served as a senior advisor to the CEO of a leading exchange, with the core goal of serving global users, breaking geographical boundaries, helping enterprises complete global talent layout, and truly achieving distributed office transformation, comprehensively improving organizational capabilities and talent density.

Rain seems to have crossed over to join Web3, but for her, having a curiosity for decentralized management and future organizational changes, and a strong belief in Web3, transformation is natural. She firmly believes in the importance of web faith for a diverse and global team, which will enable the team to overcome conflicts and balance itself in the ever-changing market environment. Rain also firmly believes that Web3 will require a large influx of talent, and the industry will thrive. Here are Rain's more thoughts and sharing on HashKey and the talent and organizational perspectives of the Web3 industry——

Q: What did HashKey Exchange do right from a human resources perspective to become a leader in Hong Kong's virtual asset exchange and bring about today's results?

Answer: Firstly, quickly build an efficient and pragmatic executive team. Building a team, establishing a team, and determining a strategy are crucial. Xiao is always a leading figure and godfather in the Web3 industry, dedicated to the development of the Web3 industry. Because of his firm belief in Web3 and profound influence, a group of leading talents who had a strong faith in Web3 and were able to stand on their own quickly gathered around Hashkey after obtaining the license to start their business. By joining Hashkey, we were able to quickly build an efficient and practical executive team.

Secondly, quickly complete organizational and talent upgrades. It is precisely because of an efficient and pragmatic executive team that the upgrade of the organization can be quickly promoted and completed. From March to May 2023, we completed a significant organizational upgrade of the exchange in just three months. The exchange has adjusted its organizational structure from a core goal of applying for licenses in the past to a "comprehensive operation oriented" organizational structure centered on serving users. The upgrade of organizational structure also leaves enough space for us to attract talents from diverse backgrounds in Web2 and Web3 from the outside. Synchronized and safeguarded the business, within 6 months, the flat organizational structure upgrade of "fully supporting business fast running" was quickly completed at the group level.

The third point is to reach a consensus on the mission and vision. The first strategic meeting after obtaining the license will outline and agree on Hashkey Group's mission and vision: mission - to make digital assets accessible, vision - to provide reliable digital asset services for 1 billion users worldwide. The upgrade of organizational structure has allowed us to attract talents from traditional finance, Web2, and Web3 backgrounds from outside, leaving enough space. In addition, we have quickly identified and recruited a large number of talents, establishing a team that can handle challenges. This team has diverse talent backgrounds and different experiences, so there must be friction when doing business. However, under the same mission and vision guidance, it is easy for everyone to reach a consensus and move forward together.

Q: During the process of building HashKey's talent team, what was the biggest challenge encountered in human resources work?

Answer: We have a very diverse talent pool. With different cultures, our teams come from all over the world. At present, we have working teams in 10 countries and regions around the world with different professional growth backgrounds, including traditional finance, Web2 and Web3. How to integrate such a diverse team into a 'One Team' and move forward in unison is indeed a significant challenge. But as mentioned before, faith in Web3 is an important prerequisite, which is the foundation for overcoming all difficulties. With a common mission and vision, the team that quickly moves forward in the wilderness after winning cards overcomes one difficulty after another, overcomes conflicts, collides and learns from each other, and ultimately forms an efficient and pragmatic team that can play and withstand challenges, and finds a balance point. As a compliant cryptocurrency exchange, we need to strictly control risks within a compliant framework while delivering experiences as quickly as possible around user needs. This may seem conflicting, but it is our diverse team that has helped us find this balance point and perfectly meet and overcome this challenge.

Q: How do you view and recruit such diverse talents to the company? What personality traits, work skills, or technical abilities do they need?

Answer: Firstly, it must be faith. At Hashkey, each of our employees has a common title of "Hashkeer", and every Hashkeer needs to have a very firm belief and love for Web3. For faith, we summarize it as 3B. Firstly, We Believe，We believe Web3， We believe in this industry and firmly believe that it will drive the progress of the entire society; Secondly, we are willing to build and dedicate our wisdom and time to the industry; Thirdly, We Become, Hashkey will become the top player in the compliance industry, leading the industry, and while we ourselves achieve Hashkey, we will also become top talents with faith in the web3 compliance track.

As a licensed and compliant exchange, HashKey Exchange requires not only the rigor of traditional finance, but also the ultimate pursuit of user experience in Web2, and more importantly, the speed of Web3. We need these three types of talents to complement each other, and they need to work together and learn from each other to integrate into a team. Therefore, we encourage a diverse and inclusive work culture, and actively create a fair, diverse, inclusive, and opportunity rich work environment for talents. It is precisely because of the compliant nature of the license that Hashkeers' polygonal talent portrait is becoming increasingly vivid. Here is a preview of our upcoming promotion of the AHA talent concept across the entire group: Adaptive, High potential, Ambitious. Hashkeers need strong resilience and tolerance to work with partners from completely different cultures, backgrounds, and work habits. Of course, they need to endure the pain of this adaptation and work together to achieve their goals in conflicts. Hashkeers need to have high potential and be willing to learn from partners from different backgrounds to accelerate the growth of their potential. Hashkeers need to have ambition and will. Although the compliance track is an inevitable trend, there are new and greater challenges in the process. Web3 has peaks and valleys. When the waves come, everyone should be cautious and impatient. When the market is in a downturn, one can endure loneliness and cultivate internal skills. This is also a necessary trait, and perseverance is important.

Q: There has always been a saying that HashKey is the Huangpu Military Academy of the industry, and the talents cultivated by the company often become the hot targets of other companies. What do you think?

Answer: HashKey's talent is multi-faceted, constantly adapting and learning from each other through persistence and overcoming difficulties. They possess both strict and meticulous compliance framework systems, as well as knowledge of Web3, speed and efficiency, and also consider Web2 platform thinking, with a focus on user experience.

Due to the uniqueness of the Hashkey platform, we seem to be the 'Huangpu Military Academy', exporting a large number of talents for the Web3 compliance track. But in one aspect, I don't see it that way either, because Web3 itself is a very large industry ecosystem, and it's still in its early stages.

I have already discussed when I worked at JD.com that the future trend of talent organization is borderless. Everyone is promoting the overall prosperity of the industry in a very large ecosystem. Only when the cake of the industry itself becomes bigger and bigger can the trendsetters in the industry reap more, rather than grabbing a small cake. The Web3 industry is still in its early stages and requires a large number of talents to jointly build. We welcome more talents to join the Web3 industry and promote its development together. We are also pleased with HashKey's ability to cultivate and deliver talent to the industry.

Of course, we value talent as a treasure and firmly believe that talent is the cornerstone of sustainable development for organizations. HashKey also actively creates a fair, diverse, inclusive, and opportunity rich working environment for talent, and we hope that the talents we value can stay on this platform for a longer time.

Q: There are many talents from offshore exchanges and other fields who also hope to join HashKey. What qualities do they need to possess?

Answer: HashKey operates in the compliance track, licensed and regulated, and is at the forefront of the industry in Hong Kong and even Asia's compliance track. There are indeed many people who hope to join. Talents from offshore exchanges have rich knowledge and experience in Web3, many of whom are Web3 native. If they come to a compliance platform, they must have an open learning and integration attitude, quickly understand and learn the compliance framework system. Only in this way can they retain the speed of Web3 without stepping on the compliance red line.

Secondly, under the compliance framework, our work and process design need to polish many details. While adhering to compliance, we also require efficiency. Under such high requirements, sometimes it can be a painful process. So, only those who are willing to immerse themselves in the game have patience and can withstand polishing and loneliness.

Q: What stage of development do you think Web3's talent recruitment and management industry is currently in? What kind of development do you hope the industry will have in the future?

A: From the perspective of the industry, the entire Web3 industry is still in its early stage, which is basically equivalent to the time period of the traditional Internet from 2011 to 2012 or even earlier. The next stage will be the era of application explosion. The infrastructure has already been available, but a large number of application scenarios have not yet fully erupted, and the market is still in the process of education and training. Speaking of Web3, many people still find it very distant and mysterious.

From a talent perspective, Web3 still requires a large number of talents. At present, there are no major companies in Web3 yet, and this industry still needs a large number of people who have faith in Web3 and are willing to join or transform into this industry, jointly promoting the development and prosperity of the industry.

I have great confidence in Web3. Many people think that blockchain is abstract, but when a large number of Web3 based application scenarios are closely related to our lives, work, and other aspects, the real era of industry explosion will come. Just like the development of Internet Web2, it is the explosion of Internet technology based applications in various industries that finally brought about the prosperity of the times.

Because the stage of the true explosion of Web3 applications has not yet arrived, those who are interested in or have faith in Web3 should join at this stage, not "diving", but crazily learning, contributing, and accumulating in the industry, so that they can follow the arrival of the Web3 explosion era and usher in the spring of their career in the future.

Q: From your personal perspective, how did the transition from Web2 to Web3 happen? I believe you also have faith in Web3. How did you recharge your Web3 faith to make this decision?

Answer: "Winning the future, organization comes first". Actually, I am more interested in the development of future organizational forms. At that time, in Web3, everyone talked about a term called decentralization, which refers to the iteration from a centralized organization to a decentralized organizational form.

When I worked at JD.com, I already shared some insights on the future development of organizations, that is, the cooperation between companies has shifted from forest ecology to bamboo forest ecology, and the ultimate boundary will become increasingly blurred, that is, borderless organizations. The boundaries between companies will become increasingly blurred, or their cooperation in the ecology will no longer be satisfied with the interweaving of branches (commercial cooperation), but will be more complex and interconnected from the root (equity). I proposed this concept a long time ago.

When I was introduced to Web3, when everyone talked about decentralized organizations, it coincided with the iterative goals of the organizational form I wanted to study, and I thus entered the Web3 industry. Of course, my personal trait is always curious about new things. But when I truly entered the Web3 industry, through rapid learning, I quickly became a believer in it, because I firmly believe that the underlying technology and logic of Web3 will empower the traditional financial industry and make the transformation of the financial industry more profound. The traditional financial industry is one of the few virgin lands that have not been fully enabled by Internet technology. The distributed network of Web3 and the distributed ledger of blockchain will give this change a clearer direction. With this belief and my own passion for iterative research on organizational forms, crossing boundaries becomes less difficult.

Q: What are the future plans for HashKey's organizational structure and is it possible to transition to DAO?

Answer: The overall trend of organizational iteration and evolution is that our generation will experience a mixed mode era, which may not be entirely based on DAO governance, but will also have traditional company management models. Nowadays, Web2 is gradually accepting distributed and remote work. In my opinion, this is likely to be the predecessor of the DAO governance model. With the progress of society and more young people joining the Web3 wave, the future work mode will undergo tremendous changes. The organizational form will shift from management to governance, where everyone is not forcibly bound to the same office or even company, but based on the same belief, under strong self drive and task system, works together to obtain benefits. Moving towards DAO is a gradual process. Currently, for HashKey Exchange, which leads the compliance track, pursuing DAO is still a bit early. Licensed compliance also means that we must operate under a regulatory system. According to compliance requirements, we must have a relatively fixed office space and very strict on-site operation rules and team requirements to control risk points. But at the operational level of the group, distributed and remote work already exist in our organization.

Q: The last question, very curious, what will be HashKey's current focus on human resources?

Based on the current situation, we will focus on three very important aspects and lay out horizontally and vertically year by year: Globalization, Digitalization, and Intelligence.

Firstly, globalization - HashKey's vision is to provide reliable digital asset services to 1 billion users worldwide. To achieve this vision, HashKey needs to establish a global talent pool. We will recruit talents globally, enhance the company's internationalization level, and ensure that the team not only has high professionalism but also competitiveness in cultural diversity. This will help HashKey better understand and serve global customers, integrating various important international perspectives, which is crucial for operating a digital asset platform on the international stage.

Next is digitization - HashKey will focus on upgrading and integrating its internal management information system this year. These systems are the infrastructure for the company's operations, and by modernizing these systems, HashKey has laid the foundation for accelerating its business processes, improving efficiency, and reducing risks, which is crucial for maintaining competitiveness in the rapidly developing digital asset market.

The third intelligence - intelligence, the application of AI modules in management is also an irreversible trend, which is the direction of our organizational change. By integrating advanced artificial intelligence systems to precipitate, transform, and analyze a series of data and behaviors, companies can not only process and analyze large amounts of data more efficiently, but also optimize decision-making processes and daily operations. The application of AI will cover various aspects of internal management in companies, making management more precise and automated.

Under each focus, our annual action plan will be different and gradually deepen year by year. We hope that one day in the future, Hashkeer from any corner of the world can fully enjoy the convenience brought by the digitalization and intelligence process of the entire organization.