This weekly roundup of stories from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong makes an attempt to curate the business’s most vital information, together with influential tasks, adjustments within the regulatory panorama, and enterprise blockchain integrations.
This week, Wanxiang Blockchain hosted its annual Shanghai Blockchain Week, an occasion that normally brings collectively the federal government, enterprise, tutorial and degen aspect of the business for a giant celebration of how far decentralized expertise has come.
This 12 months was lots totally different, because the degens have been pushed out of the limelight by the latest spate of regulation. That didn’t cease them from having their personal events, but it surely was a giant change from earlier years the place practically each main mission, VC, change, and media group hosted glitzy all-you-can-eat-and-drink occasions at landmark venues throughout Shanghai.
For the primary occasion, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin attended through video, giving his normal profound insights into the event of Ethereum. Very similar to the speeches he gave lately at different Ethereum occasions, he talked about how Ethereum can evolve by Layer-two scaling.
Layer-two tasks, resembling Close to, Avalanche, Polygon and Arbitrum have spent plenty of time cultivating Chinese language-language ecosystems, hoping to faucet into a big consumer inhabitants that doesn’t have as many ideological qualms round decentralization as western counterparts. Buterin additionally joined a panel with two others who’ve had success elevating curiosity in China, Juan Benet of Filecoin and Dominik Williams of Dfinity.
Enjoying exhausting to get
Just a few massive occasions had been out there for the night crowds, however most of them had been invite-only attendance. One occasion titled “Degen Evening” was inflicting a stir as a result of the organizers purposely neglected any point out of the place it was positioned or who they had been. Individuals who had been invited had been contacted anonymously and instructed to maintain the situation secret. The poster did specify that OHM, SPELL, TIME, and KLIMA communities had been prone to be effectively represented.
The MAODAO, a Chinese language backed neighborhood of play-to-earn players and NFT followers, additionally held an unique occasion. Like the opposite occasions, the DAO waited until the final day to disclose the situation, and solely within the Discord channel. Proudly owning a Prepared Participant Cat NFT was acknowledged to be a requirement for entrance, however no phrase on how strictly that was enforced.
Normally, the week didn’t really feel like as a lot of an outdated buddies gathering as earlier years. It’s exhausting to inform how a lot of that was as a result of laws, and the way a lot was a results of the robust market situations diluting the scene with newer gamers.
Rating the exchanges
Huobi slipped additional behind FTX this week, now sitting at solely round 60% of the quantity. Final month, Huobi introduced that they might be closing Chinese language accounts on the finish of 2021, doubtlessly slicing off a big portion of its energetic consumer base.
Judging from the volumes, OKEx and FTX appear to be benefiting essentially the most from this. Huobi’s HT token has had a tough 2021 as effectively, now buying and selling at lower than $10, a steep drop from the Could peak at $35.
One other robust performer is Gate.io, an change with roots in China that’s threatening to shed its Tier-2 standing. On Thursday, it was displaying over $7.5 billion in 24-hour volume, making it on par with main Korean change Upbit, and seventh general. Followers of memecoins will rejoice to see that of that quantity, round 20% got here from the main duo of Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.
Spilling into Hong Kong
Hong Kong is seemingly changing into a hotbed of OTC buying and selling desks, in accordance to an article by Rachel Wolfson on Cointelegraph. Wolfson described what number of of those have their very own bodily places and use case that to construct belief with customers, together with Chinese language vacationers.
The one barrier standing in entrance of this booming business is an upcoming regulatory framework, which is at present being mulled over. If Hong Kong is to observe the trail Beijing took earlier this 12 months, it might have a serious impression on town’s crypto business. That may seemingly give a fair larger increase to Singapore, the place many main crypto gamers have already taken regulatory refuge.
