RelayNode - China #6

also my week＃6 at quarantine

Apr 13, 2020

Hi from bay area and this is also my #6 week at home, hope you and your loved ones stay safe and healthy during this time. COVID-19 is bigger than anything written below but crypto is always happening and it’s good to stay informed.

What’s new

Exchanges

Bank transfer and Alipay are major on-ramp channels for crypto retails in China - among the OTC desks in three major crypto exchanges (Huobi global, OKEx and Binance), 50% support AliPay, and 60% support bank transfer, while only 7% support wechat, according to a recent report from Caijin Onchain.
BitMEX’s BTC futures daily trading volume dropped significantly after the March 12 market crash and is now less than that of Binance, OKEx, or Huobi according to data from Skew.
OK Group (OKEx’s parent company) invested $1.4M in Wuhan-based blockchain data analysis startup Yun Qu Technologies, in complementary to its own big data platform OKLink. Its fiat to crypto exchange OKCoin also received license from Japan’s FSA. (Huobi bought its Japanese license from BitTrade in 2018.)
Binance plans to open a blockchain research center in Shanghai Lingang free trade zone and announced more hires of beautiful young ladies after a recent controversial hire.

Mining

Canaan lost $148.6M in 2019 according to its financial report.
BCH and BSV went through their first halving followed with hashrate on BCH dropped to 1.9E from its 4.7E YTD peak and BSV network hashrate dropped to 1.9E from 3.5E YTD peak, according to data from Mining Pool Stats.
Two Nervos CKB ASICs are the most profitable mining rigs, while the latest BTC S19 is in third place, according to data from Wabi.

Funding

ArchForce Financial Technology (distributed infrastructure for securities and finance) raised $18.4M in series B led by China Merchants Group
Babel Finance (crypto lending) completed pre-series A (amount not disclosed), investors including Dragonfly Capital and Parallel Ventures. In an earlier report, it planned to raise $10M-20M at $100M-200M valuation.
Chengdu-based ASIC manufacturer Panda Dynamics raised $4.2M led by Delta capital.
Heyue Tek (blockchain as a service) raised $2.8M in series A led by Rendong Holdings.

Something to read/watch (thanks to the contribution from Ajian)

DApp Market Report 2020 Q1 by DAppReview, some key takeaways:
- Total transaction volume of $7.9B increased 82.2% compared to 2019 Q1. Ethereum, TRON and EOS contributed over 99% of the total volume, while the total active addresses interacted with dapps dropped 22.1%.
- Ethereum-based DeFi is the main volume growth driver, increasing 778% compared to 2019 Q1, while TRON and EOS both suffered decreases in users and transaction volume.
“What is blockchain” video by PaperClip on Bilibili, it’s among the most-clicked blockchain 101 video with over 1M views.
Understand guarantees enabled by Casper FFG, by introducing concepts proposed by the original FFG paper.
What’s needed to convert Ethereum into Stateless Ethereum: an updated tech tree.

Events (online)

April16-20 Global Mining Forum

A series of online meetups covering latest mining rigs, mining farm and pool operation, and related financial services, you can add wechat “Claire-CVL” for access.

Notable conference

*April21-23 EY Global Blockchain Summit

*May 1-2 DeFi Discussions Conf with ConsenSys

*May 7-8 Ethereal Virtual Summit 2020

*May 11-13 Consensus 2020 by CoinDesk

*June 8-10 Mainnet Events by Messari

*June 24-26 Remote Crypto Con

July 15-16 Asia Blockchain Summit (Taipei)

July 22-23 Mining Disrupt (Miami)

Sep 11-16 Shanghai Blockchain Week by Wanxiang Blockchain (Shanghai)

Sep 28-30 Hong Kong Blockchain Week 2020

October 7-8 Token2049 (Hong Kong)