This weekly roundup of stories from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong makes an attempt to curate the business’s most necessary 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, educational and degen aspect of the business for an enormous celebration of how far decentralized expertise has come.
This yr 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 non-public events, nevertheless it was an enormous change from earlier years the place almost each main undertaking, VC, alternate, 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 ordinary 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 via Layer-two scaling.
Layer-two tasks, equivalent to Close to, Avalanche, Polygon and Arbitrum have spent loads 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 ignored any point out of the place it was positioned or who they had been. Individuals who had been invited had been contacted anonymously and informed to maintain the placement 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 avid gamers and NFT followers, additionally held an unique occasion. Like the opposite occasions, the DAO waited until the final day to disclose the placement, and solely within the Discord channel. Proudly owning a Prepared Participant Cat NFT was said to be a requirement for entrance, however no phrase on how strictly that was enforced.
Generally, the week didn’t really feel like as a lot of an previous buddies gathering as earlier years. It’s exhausting to inform how a lot of that was attributable to laws, and the way a lot was a results of the robust market circumstances 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’d be closing Chinese language accounts on the finish of 2021, doubtlessly chopping off a big portion of its energetic consumer base.
Judging from the volumes, OKEx and FTX appear to be benefiting probably 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 alternate with roots in China that’s threatening to shed its Tier-2 standing. On Thursday, it was exhibiting over $7.5 billion in 24-hour volume, making it on par with main Korean alternate 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 turning 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 presently being mulled over. If Hong Kong is to observe the trail Beijing took earlier this yr, it might have a significant influence on town’s crypto business. That will doubtless give a good larger increase to Singapore, the place many main crypto gamers have already taken regulatory refuge.
