China Blockchain Research
China tightens oversight of crypto
In the alternate reality inhabited by crypto bros, most jurisdictions are always on the cusp of a full-throated embrace of digital assets. Case in point: in late August, Tron founder Justin Sun wrote on X, “China unbans crypto. What’s the best meme for this?” Regardless of Sun’s true intentions in this post, Beijing is not only “unbanning” crypto, it is tightening oversight of the industry.
Crypto hacking remains a serious problem
With the crypto bear market receding and the possible return to a bull market, it is interesting to note that the amount stolen from crypto exchanges fell in 2023. However, the overall number of digital asset hacks still grew. Maybe it was the belief that the bear market would endure that partially deterred the cybercriminals? Probably not. As it turns out, the main reason that less crypto was stolen last year was that digital asset platforms are becoming more sophisticated in their security and responses to attacks, and are working more successfully with law enforcement than in the past.
What will 2024 bring for the digital renminbi?
2023 was a year of incremental progress for the digital yuan and we expect more of the same in 2024. Gradually, hype about China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) is easing, though it still flares up from time to time. Case in point: that report published by Bloomberg last summer that depicted the mBridge cross-border CBDC initiative as a potential challenger to the US dollar in the global financial system. As much as such narratives may generate clicks, they fail to ring true.
China's e-CNY wallet hits the app stores, but does it matter?
Earlier this week the People’s Bank of China e-CNY digital wallet showed up on Android and Apple App stores in China in what appears to be the government’s next push to get people to use the somewhat underused digital currency. Previously, the PBOC's e-CNY digital wallet app was only available as a ‘side-loaded’ app meaning that it had to be loaded manually by the user rather than installed through one of the official stores. This is a relatively trivial task on an Android phone where you just click on a .APK file, but somewhat more difficult in the Apple ecosystem.
The walls close in on China’s bitcoin miners
Bitcoin mining was one of the last vestiges of China’s experimentation with decentralized virtual currency. Until recently, China was the world’s bitcoin mining center. For the crypto faithful (and the agnostics who profited from mining), it was great while it lasted. But now regulators have decided mining in China should go the way of trading. Several weeks ago Kapronasia wrote that the crackdown was just warming up. Sure enough, provincial authorities are turning up the heat. What began in Inner Mongolia – it shut down 35 mining firms between January and April – has spread to Xinjiang, Qinghai and Yunnan.
It was only a matter of time before bitcoin mining landed in China’s crosshairs. Beijing identified decentralized digital currency as a systemic financial risk in 2017 – for its use in skirting capital controls and links to money laundering - and promptly hobbled key parts of the crypto ecosystem, shutting down all exchanges and banning initial coin offerings. Mining does not pose the same immediate risks to the Chinese financial system, but its enormous power usage could crimp Beijing’s efforts to curb its carbon emissions – a major central government policy objective. With that in mind, the prospects for bitcoin miners in China look dim indeed.
The digital yuan’s cross-border dilemma
The hype about China's digital yuan can obscure the reality, especially in the cross-border space. The most adamant supporters of China’s CBDC argue that it poses a challenge to the US dollar’s role as the world’s dominant international currency because, well, it is digital, has a technological edge and thus will perhaps redefine global payments rails. This argument exaggerates the benefits of digitization while overlooking the fundamentals of the dollar's paramountcy.
The cross-border challenge for China's CBDC
China is leading the world in CBDC development, prompting speculation that DCEP (digital currency, electronic payment) is on its way to becoming the digital equivalent of the U.S. dollar. The reality is more nuanced. To be sure, China's digital fiat currency is at a more advanced stage than any other major country's CBDC, and China has many potential applications for it domestically. When it comes to cross-border use, however, many questions remain about the digital yuan.
China's burgeoning blockchain bandwagon
Here comes China's blockchain bandwagon, ready or not. The novel coronavirus may have slowed the Chinese economy down, but now that life is slowly returning to normal, blockchain hype is back. China currently has about 35,000 blockchain companies, according to information portal Tianyacha. In Guangdong Province alone, there are 20,000 of them. Even amidst the coronavirus pandemic, more than 2,000 new blockchain companies were formed between January and March, according to Forkast News.
Unsurprisingly, most of these firms are not focused on distributed ledger technology. Research by Forkast shows that just over 500 of them have a state-issued blockchain service filing number. Without one of those, a company is not a certified blockchain provider in China. China's 01 Think Tank found that about 1,000 of 30,000 blockchain firms in China are engaged in business that uses distributed ledger technology.
North Korea's growing nuclear program has long been a point of contention between the U.S. and China. Beijing prefers to handle its mercurial neighbor with kid gloves while Washington favors a tougher approach, namely economic sanctions. To evade sanctions in the digital age, Pyongyang has upped its hacking game. Both banks and cryptocurrency exchanges are victims. Digital currency offers North Korea a way to raise funds and do business outside the US dollar led global financial system. North Korea stole more than US$2 billion from both traditional financial institutions and crypto exchanges - including South Korea's Bitthumb - the United Nations said in an Aug. 2019 report.
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The Trump administration has not shown much enthusiasm for a sovereign digital currency so far. With China's advances in the area, however, Washington's stance could be set to change. In early February, a member of the United States Federal Reserve Bank board of governors said the Fed is researching and experimenting with distributed ledger technologies and their virtual-currency applications. Among the applications being explored is a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Lael Brainard, who chairs multiple Fed committees, made the remarks at a speech during an event on payments held at Stanford University. Brainard noted that 80% of central banks globally are researching CBDCs. However, she stopped well short of endorsing a full-throated campaign to create a digital dollar, devoting considerable attention to the challenges and risks posed by digital fiat currencies.
2020 Top Ten Asia Fintech Trends #3: Blockchain with Chinese characteristics blossoms
Much like its anti-corruption campaign, China's crypto crackdown is relentless. Beijing views decentralized digital currency as a conduit for money laundering and capital flight. In contrast, Beijing sees crypto's underlying blockchain technology as useful. Blockchain can help China boost its tech prowess, improve supply-chain integrity and surmount bottlenecks across many industries, particularly financial services.
Is Libra really a threat to WeChat Pay and Alipay?
It can be hard to cut through the hype surrounding Facebook's cryptocurrency project and evaluate it objectively. Facebook champions the Libra stablecoin as a powerful vehicle for financial inclusion which would be easily accessible to its many users in developing countries without a bank account. To advance the Libra project, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been playing up its nationalist credentials. If U.S. regulators fail to greenlight Libra, then Washington will cede digital currency ground to Beijing, he says.
"China is moving quickly to launch a similar idea in the coming months," Zuckerberg told the House Financial Services Committee in October. "If America doesn't innovate, our financial leadership is not guaranteed."
Understanding China's blockchain dream
Misunderstanding of China's blockchain aspirations remain widespread. Virtual-currency enthusiasts once thought the Middle Kingdom would be crypto central. They were wrong: China doesn't want to be a hub for all things crypto, but it does want to harness the underlying blockchain technology to boost its technological prowess, improve the integrity of supply chains and overcome bottlenecks across many industries - notably the financial services sector.
It was with those goals in mind that Chinese President Xi Jinping recently called for a larger role for blockchain in China's economic development. According to state-run Xinhua, Xi urged "deep integration of blockchain with the real economy," which he said could help SMEs get better access to credit as well as strengthen risk management in banking and the supervision of government agencies. He further said that China has a "solid blockchain foundation" and called for the nation to accelerate the development of blockchain technology and strengthen related basic research.