Bobby Lee’s grandparents had just been married when they fled Shanghai and the Communist Revolution in 1949. They had only a couple of suitcases and the clothes on their backs, but in those clothes, there was something else: gold, which they had stitched into the linings before they made good their escape.

“That’s how they were able to go to Hong Kong and start a new life,” says Lee now, returning from the breakfast buffet at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel and taking his seat at our table. A hundred feet or so away, attendees of London Blockchain Week trickle through the hotel lobby and into the exhibition space downstairs, eager to show their wares, share ideas and claim a slice of the most hyped industry on the planet.