This weekly roundup of news from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to collect the industry's biggest news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.
It was a quiet week on the mainland as much of the Chinese crypto community was either hiding, in Lisbon, or recovering from a week-long hangover after the Shanghai Blockchain Week that concluded last weekend.
The biggest blockchain-related news was the $ 130 million hack of the DeFi Boy X Highspeed platform, or BXH for short. BXH is a decentralized exchange that runs on BSC, Ethereum, HECO, and OKEx.
๐จ๐จ We regret to announce that BXH was attacked in #BinanceChain. The assets of other chains are safe.
We are cooperating with BSC and Peckshield for track and trace.#Leadership @HECO_Chain @BinanceChain @AnyswapNetwork @ O3Swap @protocol @cz_binance @peckshield pic.twitter.com/jNo8C53DM0- Leaderboard (@BXH_Blockchain) October 30, 2021
Even more peculiar than the platform's name itself is the nature of the hack. It appears that the attacker somehow gained access to the admin key, which raises a lot of questions about the security and decentralization of the project.
Based on this and the fact that the Chinese project claims to have had the help of the Chinese police, there are suspicions that it could be the result of an inside job. BXH has offered a great reward of up to $ 10 million for those who can help return the funds.
Huobi does not give up on the mission to the moon
Huobi's volumes continued to decline, sometimes lagging behind Coinbase Pro and the Korean exchange Upbit. Last week, Huobi had about 60% of the volume in FTX, but on Wednesday it was around 40%. It is also about a third of the volume of the main competitor OKEx. Huobi is now less than two months away from its own deadline to close accounts belonging to Chinese users. Huobi will have to drastically reorganize to regain market share that it has slowly lost to exchanges with less regulatory risk.
In a strong marketing push, Huobi has announced a contest to send a user into space aboard a private spaceship. Not all the details were given, but this announcement comes as the exchange celebrates its eighth anniversary, making it one of the oldest trading institutions in the industry.
PlatOn affirms a partnership with Google Cloud
One of China's most discreet public broadcasters announced on Twitter that it is partnering with large cloud service provider Google Cloud:
"We will work together to provide entry-level application technology and enterprise-grade platform services for global users, as well as research and development in blockchain technology, privacy protection and ecosystem building."
The announcement did not gain much attention, as it is unclear how much actual reciprocity is happening since the end of Google Cloud. Despite the announcement, the token was down around 6% on Thursday.
Mining in Southeast Asia
The Southeast Asian country of Laos is exploring cryptocurrency mining in the wake of China's mining crackdown. TO pilot project between the government and the private sector is expected to generate approximately $ 194 million towards the country's total domestic revenue projected by 2022.
Laos shares a small southern border with China's Yunnan Province, an area where many miners are still leaving after ad from the Yunnan Energy Administration in June which clarified that the national policy would apply to Yunnan itself.
Contacts report that while many miners have already left China, some have remained low, waiting to see if the regulatory environment changes or if a better opportunity presents itself. Countries like Laos are interesting potential destinations as regulations are still quite ambiguous. Traditionally, Southeast Asia has been home to a large number of โoffshoreโ businesses from China, such as gambling or casino games, that seek to avoid regulations or law enforcement.
CBDC gaining traction
China's central bank returns to boasting on the traction of its centralized digital currency, the e-CNY. Announcements in Hong Kong Fintech Week revealed that more than 140 million people now have access to accounts, with more than 62 billion transactions processed.
This is a huge leap from the previous year and should come as no surprise considering the number of trial programs that have been rolled out across the country. Many restaurants and franchise retailers are already advertising e-CNY on point of sale devices across the country.
The number seems likely to continue to rise, challenging private apps Alipay and WeChat, both of which say more than one billion users each. Replacing those two will be a difficult task, mainly due to the feature-rich nature of the super-applications. However, the central bank currency surely has much more patience and the advantage of legislators who can tilt the market in its favor.
