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Blockchain has officially been included in China’s “new infrastructure” plan. According to a briefing (CN) from NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), the new infrastructure mainly includes three aspects:
Information infrastructure
The communication network infrastructure - 5G, IoT, the industrial internet, and the satellite internet
Computing power infrastructure - data centers and intelligent computing centers.
New tech infrastructure - AI, cloud computing, blockchain
Integrated infrastructure supported by the application of the internet, big data and AI, transforming traditional infrastructure into smart transportation and smart energy infrastructure
Innovation infrastructure that supports scientific research, technology development and product development.
The term “new infrastructure” appeared firstly in 2018 as opposed to the traditional infrastructure construction such as railway, roads and airports. Usually this type of initiative is carried out in forms of fiscal policy and investment will be poured into those particular sectors.
The briefing came in a time that China reported a 6.8% GDP shrink in Q1, the first such contraction since 1992.
What’s new
China launched its national blockchain platform BSN (Blockchain Service Network), which aims to help Chinese companies adopt blockchain faster and with less cost. The protocol at launch is interoperable with major enterprise blockchain frameworks such as Hyperledger Fabric, FISCO BCOS (developed by Webank) and CITA (developed by Cryptape).
Dforce hacker(s) returned the stolen $25M during the lendf attack, as the hacker(s) might have exposed his ID and other info during the hack.
Asic manufacturer Ebang filed a 100M IPO to SEC, which shows it had net losses of $11.8M and $41.1M in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Cannan Creative raised 90M in its IPO last year and is now trading at less than half of its IPO price.
Something to read
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) released a blockchain for financial application whitepaper (CN), in which it summarized the current use cases of permission blockchain by Chinese commercial banks in supply chain finance, trade finance, payment settlement etc.
Tencent published a book called <Industrial Blockchain>, Ma Huateng (founder of Tencent) wrote an preface (in CN), which contains some interesting quotes below - I took it as an example of how big Chinese internet companies see blockchain as a business opportunity under the government’s blockchain advocacy. E.g. Tencent has issued more than 16 million blockchain-based electronic invoices/receipts since 2018, mainly leveraging its wechat pay users.
The industrial internet not only refers to the information resource network commonly used in the past, but also refers to a computing resource network that can flexibly process massive amounts of big data anytime, anywhere, and a trusted resource network that facilitates deep sharing and collaboration.
There is hope that blockchain will go beyond bitcoin and speculations to become a new infrastructure that is bound to profoundly affect and reshape our economic organization, financial organization, and social governance model.
Like the electricity consumption in the industrial era, the future "onchain data usage" may be combined with "cloud usage" to become an important indicator of economic activities.
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