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.
This week, Wanxiang Blockchain hosted its annual Shanghai Blockchain Week, an event that generally brings together government, business, academics, and mass side of the industry for a grand celebration of how far decentralized technology has come.
This year was very different, as degens have been pushed out of the spotlight by the recent spate of regulations. That didn't stop them from having their private parties, but it was a huge departure from previous years, where almost every major project, venture capital, exchange, and media group hosted dazzling all-you-can-eat and drink events in one venue. emblematic. places all over Shanghai.
For the main event, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin attended via video, giving his usual in-depth insights into Ethereum development. Like the speeches he recently delivered at other Ethereum events, he talked about how Ethereum can evolve through Layer Two scaling.
Layer two projects, such as Near, Avalanche, Polygon, and Arbitrum, have spent a lot of time cultivating Chinese-language ecosystems, hoping to tap into a large population of users that don't have as many ideological scruples around decentralization as their Western counterparts. . Buterin also joined a panel with two others who have been successful in generating interest in China, Filecoin's Juan Benet and Dfinity's Dominik Williams.
Playing hard to get
There were a few big events available for the evening crowds, but most of them were for guests only. An event titled “Degen's Night” was causing a stir because the organizers deliberately omitted any mention of where it was located or who they were. The people who were invited were contacted anonymously and told to keep the location a secret. The poster specified that the OHM, SPELL, TIME and KLIMA communities were likely to be well represented.
The MAODAO, a China-backed community of gamers who play for money and NFT fans, also held an exclusive event. Like the other events, the DAO waited until the last day to reveal the location, and only on the Discord channel. Owning a Cat NFT Ready Player was said to be a requirement for entry, but it is unknown how strictly it was enforced.
Overall, the week didn't feel like a reunion of old friends like previous years. It's hard to say how much of that was due to regulations and how much was the result of strong market conditions that diluted the scene with new players.
Classification of exchanges
Huobi slipped further behind FTX this week, now only occupies about 60% of the volume. Last month, Huobi announced that they would be closing Chinese accounts by the end of 2021, which could cut off a large chunk of their active user base.
Judging from the volumes, OKEx and FTX seem to benefit the most from this. Huobi's HT token has also had a rough 2021, now trading below $ 10, a sharp drop from the May peak to $ 35.
Another strong player is Gate.io, an exchange with roots in China that threatens to shed its Tier 2 status. On Thursday, it was showing more than $ 7.5 billion in 24 hour volume, which puts it on par with the top Korean exchange Upbit, and seventh overall. Memecoin fans will be happy to see that of that volume, around 20% came from the leading duo of Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.
Spilling to Hong Kong
Hong Kong is apparently becoming a hotbed for OTC trading desks, according to to an article by Rachel Wolfson on Cointelegraph. Wolfson outlined how many of these have their own physical locations and use cases to build trust with users, including Chinese tourists.
The only barrier to this booming industry is a looming regulatory framework, which is currently under review. If Hong Kong follows the path that Beijing took earlier this year, it could have a major impact on the city's crypto industry. That would likely give Singapore an even bigger boost, where many of the major crypto players have already taken refuge in regulation.
