Sponsored by HSBC, the College of
Business, partnered with the Hong Kong
Blockchain Society to host the 2020
edition of the International Blockchain
Olympiad (IBCOL) in early July.
Anticipating our decentralised future and
in keeping with the times, IBCOL 2020
was an entirely online event, involving
hundreds of participants in 57 teams.
In his welcoming remarks, Dean
Frank Chen expressed his gratitude to
the Hong Kong Blockchain Society for
its dedication in training and inspiring
students in blockchain learning, and to
HSBC for its generous sponsorship.
"IBCOL has been a great success, not
only because it can stimulate students’
creativity in the technology, but also
being able to gather all the subject
experts and future talents together, to
share their true passion for blockchain
and cryptography developments, and
to make a change in the world with
secure, private, decentralised solutions,"
Professor Chen added.
Mr Zhang Huifeng, Head of Corporate
Sustainability Asia Pacific at HSBC said,
"HSBC supports the IBCOL to enable
students to learn blockchain and also to
inspire them to use technology to meet
social and business needs. These are valuable future skills that will help you
fly in your career and also enable you to
make a positive difference to society."
Dr Lawrence Ma, President of the
Hong Kong Blockchain Society and
convenor of the jury said, "We were
impressed with the diversity of teams
and projects this year. The high calibre
of projects added to the difficulty in
evaluating them. We hope to see some
of these projects come to life, and we
are excited to support the IBCOL to
facilitate cooperation between projects
of different schools around the world."
The third edition of IBCOL was more
global than ever, expanding to 15
locations around the world including
Bangladesh, Canada, Mainland
China, Mongolia, Philippines, Poland,
Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, The
Netherlands, The United Kingdom, The
United States, Vietnam and Hong Kong.
The International Blockchain Olympiad
embodies the characteristics of
a business case competition, an
academic whitepaper conference, and
a "hackathon." All contestants draft a
whitepaper to address a global challenge
and proffer a complete solution, whilst
finalists are required to create a poster
board and a pitch presentation. This year’s topics covered various real-world
scenarios and ranged from supply chain,
finance, health, insurance, land and real
estate, to government, education, and
construction.
Team PChain, comprising students from
the Chinese University of Hong Kong and
the Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, won the gold medal, while
the silver and bronze medalists hailed
from Bangladesh and the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, Microcent team from the
College of Engineering and Blockio from
the College of Business of CityU won the
Best Fintech Award and People’s Choice
Award respectively.
In addition to HSBC’s sponsorship, IBCOL
2020 was supported by Julia Computing,
Kaplan, and the Office of the Privacy
Commissioner for Personal Data of Hong
Kong.
HSBC has kindly pledged to continue
supporting this event, enabling the
sustainable growth of education in
blockchain, helping to equip students
with "future-proof" skills, and
developing a new type of business
leader. We look forward to the 2021
edition of the Olympiad!
