L’Unione Europea riconosce le criptovalute

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L’UE riconosce ufficialmente le valute virtuali grazie all’entrata in vigore della Direttiva UE 2018/843 del Parlamento e del Consiglio europeo.

Filippo Vendrame12 luglio 2018, 15:35

L’Europa riconoscerà ufficialmente le criptovalute grazie all’entrata in vigore della Direttiva UE 2018/843 del Parlamento e del Consiglio europeo con la sua pubblicazione all’interno della Gazzetta Ufficiale dell’Unione Europea. Tale direttiva inizierà ad essere applicata alla fine di luglio ma i Paese membri avranno tempo sino al 10 gennaio 2020 per recepirla. Entro questa data, dunque, tutti i Paese membri dell’Unione Europea dovranno riconoscere le criptovalute. In realtà la Direttiva europea non fa esplicito riferimento al termine “criptovalute“, ma la definizione che da sulle monete virtuali è comunque una chiaro riferimento a loro.

Una rappresentazione di valore digitale che non è emessa o garantita da una banca centrale o da un ente pubblico, non è necessariamente legata a una valuta legalmente istituita, non possiede lo status giuridico di valuta o moneta, ma è accettata da persone fisiche e giuridiche come mezzo di scambio e può essere trasferita, memorizzata e scambiata elettronicamente.

La Direttiva europea continua anche evidenziando che la moneta virtuale non deve essere confusa con la moneta elettronica sebbene le valute virtuali possano essere utilizzate anche per pagamenti ed altri scopi.

Le valute virtuali non dovrebbero essere confuse con la moneta elettronica. […] Sebbene le valute virtuali possano essere spesso utilizzate come mezzo di pagamento, potrebbero essere usate anche per altri scopi e avere impiego più ampio, ad esempio come mezzo di scambio, di investimento, come prodotti di riserva di valore o essere utilizzate in casinò online.

La Direttiva esplicita anche la figura del “prestatore di servizi di portafoglio digitale” che viene definita in questo modo.

Un soggetto che fornisce servizi di salvaguardia di chiavi crittografiche private per conto dei propri clienti, al fine di detenere, memorizzare e trasferire valute virtuali.

Grazie all’entrata in vigore di questa Delibera, l’Unione Europea fa un importante passo in avanti nel settore delle monete virtuali accodandosi al Giappone che da tempo le aveva già riconosciute. Entro il 2020, dunque, tutta l’Europa e quindi anche l’Italia dovrà riconoscere ufficialmente le criptovalute.

 

fonte: https://www.webnews.it/2018/07/12/unione-europea-criptovalute/

 

European countries join Blockchain Partnership

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22 European countries signed today a Declaration on the establishment of a European Blockchain Partnership. The Partnership will be a vehicle for cooperation amongst Member States to exchange experience and expertise in technical and regulatory fields and prepare for the launch of EU-wide blockchain applications across the Digital Single Market for the benefit of the public and private sectors. This should ensure that Europe continues to play a leading role in the development and roll-out of blockchain technologies.

 

Blockchain is technology for promoting user trust. It makes it possible to share on-line information, agree on and record transactions in a verifiable, secure and permanent way. The technology is already being successfully tested, mostly in financial services, and will become more operational and integrated into increasing number of digital services, such as regulatory reporting, energy and logistics in the coming years.

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, welcomed the signature of the declaration:

“In the future, all public services will use blockchain technology. Blockchain is a great opportunity for Europe and Member States to rethink their information systems, to promote user trust and the protection of personal data, to help create new business opportunities and to establish new areas of leadership, benefiting citizens, public services and companies. The Partnership launched today enables Member States to work together with the European Commission to turn the enormous potential of blockchain technology into better services for citizens”.

The decentralised and collaborative nature of blockchain and its applications allows exploiting the full scale of the Digital Single Market from the outset. Close cooperation between Member States can help avoiding fragmented approaches and can ensure interoperability and wider deployment of blockchain-based services. The Partnership will contribute to the creation of an enabling environment, in full compliance with EU laws and with clear governance models that will help services using blockchain flourish across Europe.

The European Commission also launched the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum in February 2018 and has already invested more than EUR 80 million in projects supporting the use of blockchain in technical and societal areas. Around EUR 300 million more are to be allocated to blockchain by 2020.

List of countries signatories of the Declaration: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK.

Other countries, Members of the EU and of the European Economic Area are invited to join the European Blockchain Partnership.

Some research projects on blockchain financed by the EU:

Links:

Related documents:

 

Maggiori info: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-countries-join-blockchain-partnership

Why Blockchain is Cloud 2.0: Expert Take

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In our Expert Takes, opinion leaders from inside and outside the crypto industry express their views, share their experience and give professional advice. Expert Takes cover everything from Blockchain technology and ICO funding to taxation, regulation and cryptocurrency adoption by different sectors of the economy.

If you would like to contribute an Expert Take, please email your ideas and CV to a.mcqueen@cointelegraph.com.[1]

Cloud innovation was responsible for creating a near-trillion dollar ecosystem. But that was just the first step. Blockchain is the logical next iteration of computing.

Cloud was the first move away from centralization. Companies needed to store files and access processing power for applications with ample network bandwidth to accommodate day-long use. However, server rooms required maintenance, constant security, proper provisioning and regular updates. By moving servers offsite (or into the cloud), companies could expand their operations beyond the shackles of hardware.

Today, companies can spin up offices virtually anywhere and even hire remote workers with ease. Computers and smartphones are simply bridges to more processing power concentrated elsewhere.

Cloud decentralized the workforce

Now, Blockchain is introducing the second iteration of computation structure. Through a distributed ledger system, Blockchain has created networks[2] of computations that are secure, immutable and democratic. This could lead to un-hackable programs and web services, transparent networks and stronger system reliability.

Blockchain decentralizes computation

Blockchains use miners[3] to solve mathematical problems and provide consensus. Mining participants lease their computing power to the Blockchain network in exchange for cryptocurrency rewards. Collectively, they build the network and verify the creation of additional “blocks.” Groups of miners make up a system of nodes in the network that store and process data. Miners have computing pools around the world that allocate their processing power to:

  • Keep a full-copy of the Blockchain
  • Verify and process transactions
  • Run applications/smart contracts

Ethereum[4], one of the most popular Blockchain platforms, allows developers to access the Blockchain through the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The EVM provides developers tools to build decentralized applications or Dapps. These applications use the Blockchain to host their backend processes.

Instead of an application operating on a single server. Dapps are split into fragments,  sort of like a torrent,  and run concurrently. Several computers run bits and pieces of a program with numerous redundancies. These programs make up a command-based ledger that is constantly verifying code. No single computer owns the entire application backend, so it becomes near impossible to hack or corrupt.

Unlike cloud computing, the decentralized Blockchain doesn’t need to live in a server room. Cloud applications typically do carry redundancy on a handful of nodes, but nothing close to the thousands of nodes working on networks like Ethereum.

The Cloud moved servers off of enterprise campuses and centralized the processing power elsewhere. Blockchain is slicing up the processing power and scattering it all over the globe.

The potential for Blockchain to harness the computing power of the entire Internet demolishes the fictitious belief that cryptocurrency is without value, a bubble or tech’s latest fad. The truth is, cryptocurrency[5] can act as a smarter and safer bartering system that enhances the delivery of Internet technologies and applications. With Blockchain, we can create a volunteered network , an internet/cloud 2.0 , that enhances cyber security and lends itself to advancements in computing, AI, IoT and record keeping. It’s a multi-trillion dollar solution to issues across all market verticals and we are just scratching the surface.

The views and interpretations in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Cointelegraph.

 

Ben Noble is a founding partner of MarketBlok[6], a marketing and PR company for Blockchain technologies. Prior to his crypto work, Ben was an accomplished marketing professional for cloud-based services.

Startup Aims to Make Online Shopping Easier and Sharing Personal Data Safer

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The Safein startup[1], founded in Lithuania in late 2017, has launched a beta-version of its platform that allows users to sign up to new websites and buy goods and services with just a couple of clicks. The Safein team plans to obtain an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license in the EU, which covers crypto and fiat payments.  

Clicking in and clicking out

The startup describes itself as a “revolutionary way to pay online.” The core idea is simple: a user creates a full profile at Safein, undergoes KYC only once, and after that can apply it to multiple e-commerce platforms. Moreover, Safein won’t provide the users’ personal data[2] to any website without their approval, the company states.

According to the Safein website, the retail e-commerce sales worldwide will constantly grow from $2,290 bln in 2017 to $4,480 bln in 2021. As sales grow, consumers are having to make more and more accounts, and then often lose the passwords. Meanwhile, collecting and keeping personal data from all those accounts is pretty costly for the companies.

According to the Safein press release[3], onboarding new users can cost an online service provider up to $20 per new customer, with a total annual bill for identity assurance exceeding $3.5 bln in the UK alone. Even worse, in order to properly collect, manage and store the personal data collected, companies have to shell out even more.

“We’re combining digital identities KYC and payment services in one platform, so nobody did that before,” states Safein Co-Founder & COO Lukas Deksnys in a brief video interview[4]. “We basically noted that there’s a lot of inefficiency in the online shopping process,” says Lukas.

An official license for crypto payments

According to the Safein official press release[5], the startup will be the world’s first payment service provider to put in the necessary paperwork and obtain the Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license in the EU, which covers crypto and fiat payments.

“Our main target is to eliminate useless registrations and KYC checks by allowing our users to only do it once on our platform and then using that data whenever you are using any online service,” says the press release.

In early 2018, the Safein team released a beta-version of its platform with basic single-click login functionality. The beta-version, or as the team calls it, MVP (Minimum Viable Product), is available for testing at the Safein website, and Android and iOS apps. Each activity carried out by Safein platform users is rewarded with SFN tokens.

“In addition (to MVP), we have just launched an identity verification service inside our platform where users can whitelist for our ICO by verifying their identity within our app! They will be able to use the same account later on to participate in partnering ICOs or exchanges,” says the Safein press release.

Safein will launch its ICO campaign[6] on April 25. The soft cap is 4,000 ETH and the hard cap is 12,500 ETH.

 

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

Crypto Advertisers On Google Adwords Report Ad Suspensions And Account Terminations

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Some advertisers using Google[1] Adwords to promote cryptocurrency related businesses are seeing a drop in their ad views, with other users posting about suspension of both their ads and their accounts, Finance Magnates[2] reported on March 8.

According to data given to Finance Magnates anonymously by an Initial Coin Offering[3]

(ICO) marketing company, the views of its advertisements through Adwords have dropped by the thousands. Below is a table from Finance Magnates showing views of the company’s advertisements over a 24 hour period.

pic

Finance Magnates connects the drop in views to the fact that crypto-based Adwords ads are now sometimes defined as “limited[4],” meaning that they are approved but will not show for certain age groups, regions, or devices.

A cursory search of the Google Adwords Account Issues section brings up several posts by companies in the crypto sphere that have written about their ads being suspended. Some even claim that their accounts have been suspended and terminated.

User anas b wrote[5] that her Blockchain[6] technology development company’s account was terminated due to “misrepresentation” with no chance of reinstatement:

“I have analyzed the website that is www.blockobi.com[7] completely and I couldn’t find any reason that is violating google policies. Our business is “blockchain technology development” and we provide services in UAE[8]. Please suggest what I have to do in this regard as Google team is not telling exact issue/concern of suspension of our account.”

In response to an inquiry[9] entitled, “Why CryptoCurrency Accounts Block [sic] or Suspended?” user MosheTLV commented that it may be because Adwords’ Financial Services regulations are not being followed by some crypto advertisers. User Andrew H posted[10] on a similar thread that crypto related ads may be limited or blocked due to the “very high risk [of crypto investing] for customers, which is not made clear in any detail” in crypto advertisements, which could constitute a violation of the Financial Services regulations.

In January of this year, Facebook[11] officially banned[12] cryptocurrency-related advertisements, citing “misleading or deceptive promotional practices.” An unnamed source told Finance Magnates that Google is also considering an official ban of cryptocurrency-related advertisements this March.

However, Finance Magnates also reports that a month ago a Canadian regulator openly asked Google to initiate such a ban, but Google denied, explaining that the company did not want to limit an entire industry from Google advertising.

In an email to Finance Magnates, Google Adwords also denied any change in their Financial Services regulations that would block cryptocurrency or ICO related advertisements.

Is Blockchain-Based Lottery to Intervene the Online Gambling Market?

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The Fire Lotto project, founded by Russian entrepreneurs in Cyprus, has launched an online lottery platform that is built on Ethereum smart contracts. Despite its relatively recent emersion on the online gambling market, Firelotto has already started four lottery games on its website and reported to Cointelegraph that initial guaranteed prize pool exceeds $1 mln.

Decentralizing the chances

Selling lottery tickets for no more than $2, the Fire Lotto platform is going to solve the transparency issue on the entire online lottery market. “Fire Lotto can operate as a global Blockchain protocol, but can also be offered to governments of specific countries as a solution to challenges to ensuring a fair lottery,” states the project’s white paper[1].

According to the Amiko research company’s recent marketing report[2], by 2018, the market size of gambling and lottery online games will grow to €52.98 bln (about $65 bln), as people continue to adapt to technology and online entertainment activities. And of course, the main driver of the industry is a rapidly growing mobile segment.

In total, the lottery industry holds a 29 percent share of the global gambling revenue and is facing challenges due to the growth of the digital economy.

Although the fairness of the game still remains questionable. Is the jackpot winner real? Is lottery truly random? Is the money really accumulated in one pool? The Firelotto team believes that the Blockchain[3] decentralized protocol can offer answers to all these questions.

Fair enough!

According to the startup’s statement, winning numbers are chosen by RNG (random number generator) based on Blockchain technology of Bitcoin, so they are impossible to fake. “The global lottery industry is moving closer to cross-border, high-technology lotteries, and Blockchain technology can be the stepping stone needed for this innovation,” says the project’s team in the paper.

As all lottery parameters are released in open source (GitHub open code), they are accessible and fully transparent 24/7, the company states. And, finally, the decentralized platform provides full autonomy for winners and independence.

The Fire Lotto platform runs on both mobile and PC versions. As for now, four popular lottery games are available for users. Instant lottery Roger’s wheel has a fortune wheel with 21 numbers. It offers bets from 0,007 ETH with coefficient from two to 20. If a user guesses the right number, then he receives his bet multiplied by a chosen coefficient.

There are also three types of draw lottery: 4 of 20, 5 of 36, 6 of 45. “You pick one, buy a ticket and mark numbers. Lotteries are held every six hours. Your winnings are based on the amount of numbers that you’ve guessed,” states the project’s website. According to the company, the minimum guaranteed Prize fund of draw lotteries is over 450 ETH at the moment and it keeps enlarging till it reaches 1,100 ETH.

In March 2018 the Fire Lotto[4] team runs its ICO campaign. The project lures its investors with transparent referral program and 15 percent cashback for each ticket sold. According to the project’s paper, 10 percent commission payments to FLOT token holders provide an endless source of crypto income. The team plans to use the White Label affiliate program bringing up to 50 percent share from the tickets sales revenue to affiliate partners.

Soft cap is $2,000,000 (7,000,000 FLOT tokens) and hard cap is $15,000,000. “In case the soft cap will not be reached all investment payments will be returned to investors wallets,” states the white paper. According to Fire Lotto, the soft cap has been reached within the first week of pre-sale in January 2018.

 

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

TrueEx Teams With ConsenSys To Make Ethereum More Accessible To Institutional Players

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New York-based fintech[1] company trueEX has announced an upcoming release of a regulated derivatives marketplace for digital assets as well as a partnership between their newly created affiliate, True Digital Holdings (TDH), and Blockchain[2] tech company ConsenSys[3] to create a benchmark rate for the price of Ethereum[4] (ETH).

The announcement comes from a press release[5] published today, March 12. TrueEX, which is the first exchange approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission[6] (CFTC) as a Designated Contract Market (DCM) for swaps, writes that the initial Bitcoin[7] contracts settled in USD will be listed as “trueDigital” on the current trueEX swap platform.

The press release notes that trueEX is still awaiting approval from the CFTC for the contracts.

According to Sunil Hirani, the founder of TDH, the growing crypto marketplace has thus far been lacking the kind of institutional involvement that trueEX will offer:

“Institutional investors and commercial partners are ready for a regulated and liquid marketplace to gain exposure to and hedge these increasingly important digital currencies and commodities, but the marketplace is sorely lacking the necessary foundation, infrastructure and platforms that institutional investors have come to expect in other important markets.”

The partnership between TDH and ConsenSys and the creation of the Ether benchmark rate will go alongside the creation of “the infrastructure needed for the broad adoption of digital assets by the institutional community,” according to the press release. Ethereum is the second largest digital asset by market cap — Bitcoin as the first — according to data on CoinMarketCap[8].

In early December of 2017, CBOE[9] launched the first Bitcoin futures contracts[10], with CME[11] Group launching the second[12] around a week later.

New P2P Decentralized Platform to Make Crypto and Fiat Exchanges Easier

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In late January 2018, Streamity[1], a Singapore-based startup with Russian roots, released its cryptocurrency exchange app StreamDesk, which is able to exchange various currencies[2] from user to user with no intermediary. The project is now working on creating the decentralized platform, which they claim, “will revolutionize the modern crypto exchange market.”

Looking to the market

At least once, every cryptocurrency owner has faced the same problem: where to change the cryptos to fiat? Hundreds of online exchanges have been launched during the last year, but they are not easy to deal with. The commissions are unreasonably high and the exchanges themselves are not stable, even the big ones may suspend their work abruptly or even collapse, as was the case with BTC-e[3] in August 2017 after the US authorities intervention.

Moreover, currently, it’s impossible to send a small amount of funds through most of the existing cryptocurrency exchange services as they have introduced minimum transaction amounts. In most cases, this minimum transaction amount obstructs users who want to use the services to give small donations or buy movie tickets or online games.

The Streamity team aims to eliminate the inconveniences of the existing cryptocurrency exchange system. Its StreamDesk app will allow transactions as small as $2 to be sent through its servers with almost zero fees. The startup states that it’s going to make the cryptocurrency,  fiat money exchange process completely independent and secure thanks to the use of the smart-contract architecture and the API of payment systems.

No more waiting for transactions

According to the company’s website, StreamDesk was designed to avoid scenarios where the exchange is rendered inactive for several hours due to a successful hack, which in most cases leads to the loss of the customer’s deposit. To achieve this, StreamDesk deploys the use of smart contracts coupled with numerous verifications and encryption algorithms to secure its transactions.

“For users selling cryptocurrencies, a buying order is available on the queue. In this way P2P transactions between the seller and the buyer is fastened as there will always be pending orders to buy and sell simply awaiting responses from users who intend to buy or sell,” says the Streamity blog at Medium[4].

This makes StreamDesk different from most existing exchange platforms, where the time lag between buying and selling can be annoyingly big, sometimes exceeding 12 hours. Some existing platforms will even automatically cancel the transaction order if one party does not respond within a given timeframe.

During its pre-sale in January, the startup raised $2.8 mln. Streamity plans to start its official crowdfunding campaign on March 12, 2018 and will end on March 25. The STM-tokens will be released on the Ethereum platform using the ERC 20 standard and has a hard cap of $20 mln.

According to the Streamity website, the STM-tokens won’t be issued in the future, the number of STMs will be strictly limited to 180 mln tokens, and the value of one token will equal $0.2. Tokens will be distributed proportionally within the number of investments acquired during the ICO campaign, including additional bonuses and rewards.

 

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

Japanese Electric Company Tests Bitcoin Lightning Network Payments For Car Charging

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The Chubu Electric Power Company, the third largest electric utilities provider in Japan[1], has partnered with Internet of Things[2] (IoT) startup Nayuta Inc and software company Infoteria in order to experiment with the possibility of using Blockchain[3] technology to record the charging of electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrids. The Lightning Network[4] is set to be used for charging micropayments for the electricity, reports TechCrunch Japan[5].

As part of its plan to build a new type of “collective housing” that contains an electric vehicle charging component, the Chubu Electric Power Company is simultaneously performing tests on both the Blockchain level, and second layer scalability solution Lightning Network level, towards the development of this project.

Nayuta’s development of a charging outlet that is compatible with Blockchain, in combination with Infoteria’s development of a tandem mobile application, means that users could hypothetically see the charge history of the electric vehicle as recorded to the Blockchain, according to local news outlet The Denki Shimbun[6].

A Blockchain record of electrical charges on a user-friendly mobile app “makes it possible to operate a highly reliable charge management system with a small introduction cost,” according to local news outlet Chuden[7]. One example given as a result of the low costs is that an owner of an electric vehicle could install a charging system in his apartment using this technology, which is a key part of Chubu Electric’s collective housing plan.

According to TechCrunch Japan, even though the Lightning Network has already been implemented in several other forms, Nayuta is using their own independently developed open source software for the experiments in micropayments for electric vehicle charging.

Kenichi Kurimoto, the CEO of Nayuta, told Cointelegraph that he believes “protocol development is open-source activity.”

In relation to the relevance of the Lightning Network to this project, Kurimoto said, according to TechCrunch Japan, that “it can handle real time […] and enormous transactions:”

“There is a tremendous number of transactions in the IoT field, there is a possibility that using the Lightning Network can handle a larger number of transactions than using it in the cloud.”

Kurimoto told Cointelegraph that the collaboration is for experimental purposes, and that business cooperation will only be discussed once the experiment is finished.

Nayuta has developed two different kinds of power sockets for electric vehicle charging and making Bitcoin payments: one is a power socket, developed in 2015 that has been modified for a zero confirmation payment system, that has a pseudo SPV wallet software on a micro-controller, and the other has a Lightning Network software named “ptarmigan,” which Nayuta is currently developing. 

LN Socket A

Kurimoto told Cointelegraph that Infoteria has made a prototype mobile smartphone app for the service of the first type.

In the experiment for the second type of power socket, real time payment was made when a closed network, made up of  “ptarmigan” nodes and other “Lightning Network specific software (BOLT) was configured on Testnet,” Kurimoto wrote.

Kurimoto writes that “ptarmigan makes [it] possible to conduct Lightning Network transaction with c-lightning, lnd, eclair in closed network on Testnet, although we ha[ve] been still developing it further:”

“With developing ptarmigan, we will continue to develop and experiment to seek for what kind of architecture is the best to apply Lightning Network for IoT.”

He adds that they are also developing a solution that will work on the bitcoind 0.16 protocol, but for now only bitcoind 0.15 is available. A manual on how to use “ptarmigan” is available on GitHub[8].

Although Chubu Electric Power has confirmed the effectiveness of their experiments so far, according to The Denki Shimbun, Hidemi Noda, the head of the chief research planning group of Chubu Electric Power Technologies Development Division, said:

“This verification is the first step, I’d like to improve the service by finding out the problems and trying to improve it.”

Blockchain technology has already been used for record keeping in regards to automobiles. At the end of February, the Dubai[9] Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) announced plans for a Blockchain-based vehicle lifecycle tracking system[10].

An innovative use of payments on the Lightning Network recently made the news, when the man who originally bought pizza in the world’s first documented Bitcoin[11] (BTC) transaction for a physical item bought two more pizzas[12] using the Lightning Network.

China’s IT Ministry Wants A Blockchain Standard System ‘As Soon As Possible’

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China’s[1] Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (IT) has conducted a study on Blockchain[2] technologies in order to promote the “formation of a complete Blockchain standard system as soon as possible,” according to a press release[3] published yesterday, March 12.

The Information and Software Services Division of the Ministry of Industry and IT, along with the China Electronics Standardization Institute, will set up a committee to promote national Blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

The press release notes that other international organizations, like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have already begun standardizing Blockchain technology. China has made “positive progress” in this process through its status as a participating country in the ISO’s Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) committee, TC 307[4].

Although China has banned[5] Initial Coin Offerings[6] (ICO) and both domestic[7] and foreign crypto exchanges[8], its legislation against cryptocurrencies has not prevented the country from supporting Blockchain[9], the technology behind crypto.

One of China’s top retailers, JD.com launched a Blockchain incubation startup[10] in late February of this year. The same retailer also began using Blockchain to track the supply chain[11] of its meat sales in early March.