The Rundown
Digital Industrial Revolution
It is starting to look like China is going full blockchain with plans to issue a central bank stablecoin, presumably to regain power from which controls the vast majority of payments in the country.
They’re going so far as to remove articles that say blockchain tech is a scam. Freedom of speech so being a luxury in China.
Like Russia before them, they too now claim they want to be at the forefront of blockchain implementations, with it unclear whether they can and/or what effect this might have.
Russia, The Big Error of History
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has gone so far as to even ordered the central bank to step down when the latter hinted at a dislike towards this space.
That they want to orchestrate a drive towards blockchain integration is clear, but whether they can is a different matter.
China, The Open Markets Dilemma
A a simple trajectory of the blockchain starts in London, then USA, Russia, France , Venezuela and Iran on one hand, Saudis on the other, and now to China.
China has many very smart men and women who enjoyed and still enjoy fairly close relations or at least have interactions with western talent.
The problem is China’s firewall, which in this case is an almost physical firewall in that they have banned crypto exchanges, and thus any western interest in the country where the crypto or blockchain aspects are concerned.
It’s unlikely they’d be able to lead. It is perhaps even impossible realistically thinking because China might have surface knowledge but not the deep knowhow that comes from being at the forefront of the computer revolution during a period ranging from the 70s to the 90s when the latter went mainstream, and then at the forefront of the internet age thereafter.
Bitcoin Jumps 12% as China’s Xi Embraces Blockchain, Boosting Crypto Sentiment
Bitcoin prices are rebounding from a five-month low touched earlier this week.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country should seize opportunities afforded by blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin.
Despite China’s ban on cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017, the comments from the leader of the world’s second-largest economy could boost sentiment toward digital assets in general, providing a positive market backdrop for bitcoin, says eToro’s Mati Greenspan.
Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, said the country needs to “seize the opportunity” afforded by blockchain technology.
Speaking as part of the 18th collective study of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on Thursday in Beijing, Xi said blockchain technology has a wide array of applications within China, listing topics ranging from financing businesses to mass transit and poverty alleviation.
“We must take the blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies,” Xi told committee members.
“[We must] clarify the main direction, increase investment, focus on a number of key core technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation.”
United States, The Complacent
The United States has one very big problem. It is ruled by bankers. That’s a generalization and perhaps not a fully correct statement, but that banks have immense influence is far too clear.
Banks of course are not a monolithic entity. In addition, there’s a generational divide. The older generation which thinks this blockchain stuff is complete nonsense, and the younger one that sees the need to adapt.
This generational transition of power has just begun, but the older generation is in many respects doing much to slow down innovation and in the case of Libra they’re thinking of stopping it entirely.
The other big transition in the United States is a very slow but noticeable change in power balances between the techies riding the wave of the digital revolution, and the old finance.
Plenty of the latter will adapt, but their instinct naturally has been to slow down digitally native finance.
We pass no judgment on whether these are right decisions or not, at least not in this editorial, as going a bit slowly may well be to the benefit of all in the United States for now.
Yet just how slowly, can be very crucial because that would give China a window of opportunity in what American historians would probably call the great mistake if it came to pass.
5 Good Minutes
Bakkt to Launch Crypto ‘Consumer App’
In a blog post, Bakkt chief product officer Mike Blandina wrote that the company was working on developing an app to let consumers use digital assets when purchasing goods from merchants.
“We’ll be launching a consumer app to make it easy for consumers to discover and unlock the value of digital assets, as well as ways in which they can transact or track them. Merchants gain access to a broader set of customers with expanded spending power,” Blandina wrote.
He hinted that the app might support more than just bitcoin, which is currently the only digital asset Bakkt and its parent company Intercontinental Exchange provide futures contracts for.
“A key feature of the model we’ve designed is to support a superset of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies as seamlessly as investors transact in stocks in a retail brokerage account,” he wrote. “Our vision is to provide a consumer platform for managing a digital asset portfolio, whether they wish to store, transact, trade or transfer their assets.”
The Hard Truth
Binance charged Blockstack $250,000 prior to listing Stacks. Yes another Binance Story.
Binance charged Blockstack $250,000 to list Stacks
Blockstack says it was a “long term payment” not a “listing fee”
Several 20-year plus exchange veterans tell The Block that’s likely a bunch of malarkey