Can China’s Blockchain Push Unleash the End-of-Year Bulls?
- China publicly announcing their support for blockchain innovation seems to have given the bulls a reason to charge again.
- Total crypto market cap has jumped by more than $40 billion in a matter of hours, with Bitcoin closing in on $10,000.
Chinese flag in Beijing, China. Wikipedia
Not a few hours had passed since Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, emphasized on the importance of blockchain adoption, that we saw an explosion in the crypto market.
In less than 12 hours, Bitcoin jumped from $7,700 to $10,000. Ethereum and all other major cryptocurrencies followed suit, pushing the total crypto market cap from $213 billion to $255 billion.
All this comes after a strong dump on October 24, most likely caused, at least in some part, by Mark Zuckerberg’s recent hearing in Congress.
Although the main focus wasn’t Libra, but rather privacy concerns and grilling over Facebook’s “move fast, break things” way of doing things, the leftover taste after the hearing was definitely negative towards cryptocurrency.
The majority of policymakers present at the hearing expressed concerns over Libra, most notably law enforcement.
Feeling threatened by a private currency competing with the USD, what we saw was quite predictable, albeit ill-advised questions from regulators and the reactions of Mark Zuckerberg were quite funny at times.
A common counterargument of Facebook’s CEO was the fact that, as the U.S. government stalls the progress of Libra, China is advancing, and advancing fast.
Blockchain innovation is a new spectrum of battlefield where the country that emerges as the leader could be the next global superpower. That fits very well with China’s well-established and well-known state goals.
Although crypto market caps have been drawing an upward green straight line for the past day, it’s not something we haven’t seen before.
Quite likely, a correction will soon commence as the rush settles and conservatives still shaken by 2017 and 2018 bears take over.
Still only some hours into the uptrend, it is hard to say whether it will last and if so, how long. In 2017, prices were steady up until around this time of the year, when the crypto market started slowly gaining speed before ultimately peaking in December.
Although some say history repeats itself, we can only speculate whether 2019 could be a repeat of 2017.
With several bullish trends emerging temporarily so far in 2019, it is apparent that the crypto market is trying hard to break through the grip of the grizzlies.
Blockchain adoption in 2019 has skyrocketed as almost all major corporations either already use the technology in some way or are experimenting with it.
The setting seems to be perfect but the bears will soon have a healthy say, reality checking this explosive recovery.
- The head of China’s central bank digital currency institute said the e-CNY has undergone a major upgrade, and should be made available as an option in all retail scenarios.
- The PBOC official noted that platforms can integrate the CBDC in the short term using QR codes, and focus on upgrading their payment tools in the long run.
Office building of the People’s Bank of China. Flickr
- The team behind Multichain confirmed that their CEO was detained in China on 21 May, and that all of his electronic devices were confiscated by the local police.
- The CEO’s sister moved the project’s remaining funds to wallets under her control on 9 July, and several days later was also detained by the police, leaving the team with no funds.
- A new 13-count superseding indictment has accused Sam Bankman Fried of bribing one or more Chinese officials in order to unfreeze accounts connected to Alameda.
- In early 2021, Chinese authorities froze certain Alameda accounts on two of China’s largest crypto exchanges”, which reportedly held more than $1 billion worth of crypto assets.