Bitcoin (BTC) hodlers need to watch the central banks of China and Japan as well as the United States as BTC/USD battles “huge” resistance. That was the opinion of trading firm QCP Capital, which in its latest crypto market research piece, “The Crypto Circular,” warned that Bitcoin faces risks far beyond the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin "most direct global liquidity proxy" Having survived the latest flood of macroeconomic data from the U.S., Bitcoin is nonetheless flagging right below $25,000 as bulls run out of momentum. For QCP Capital, there is now reason to believe that risk factors for price performance will …

Authorities from the Hainan province in southern China have vowed to increase oversight on the nonfungible token (NFT) sector to “promote the healthy development” of the sector and to stomp out fraud and other associated risks. In a separate announcement, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) also announced that it is working on new features for its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot program, referred to as the digital yuan or eCNY. NFT oversight In a public notice posted on Jan. 29, Hainan’s market regulator and nine other agencies from the province outlined a lengthy plan to tackle the NFT …

China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) — the digital yuan, or eCNY — has received upgrades giving it smart contract functionality alongside a series of newly unveiled use cases. The smart contract function was launched on the Meituan app, a Chinese app offering retail and food delivery services, according to a Jan. 17 report by local cryptocurrency media outlet 8btc. When Meituan users place an order and pay with their e-CNY wallet, a smart contract triggers and searches for keywords and purchased items in their order. If a user buys something on the list of keywords for the day, they …

A former official of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank, has expressed disappointment that China’s digital yuan is seeing little use. Xie Ping, a former PBOC research director and current finance professor at Tsinghua University, made critical public comments about China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference, according to a Dec. 28 Caixin report. Xie noted that cumulative digital yuan transactions had only crossed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after launch. “The results are not ideal,” he said, adding that “usage has been low, highly inactive.” Despite the …

The Chinese city of Wuhan had reportedly shelved its aspirational nonfungible tokens (NFTs) plans amid growing regulatory uncertainty around the crypto and Web3 technologies in the country. Wuhan first announced its plans to support metaverse and NFTs in the aftermath of the coronavirus breakout as a measure to boost its economy ruined by the pandemic. The city was the epicenter of the COVID-19 breakout. The Wuhan government’s draft industrial plan for the city’s metaverse economy development included a line about NFTs. However, that part has now been omitted from the latest version, according to a report by South China Morning …

Chinese central bank governor Yi Gang, in a recent speech at Hong Kong Fintech Week, talked about the progress of their national digital currency called the digital yuan. He outlined the progress and the adoption of the national digital currency. During his speech, Yi noted that the digital yuan is being positioned as an alternative to cash in China, a country with a robust digital payment infrastructure. He added that “privacy protection is one of the top of the issue on our agenda.” He went on to describe the two-layer payment system that would offer controllable anonymity to the users. …

China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) project has reached the mark of 100.04 billion yuan (close to $14 billion) of made transactions during its pilot phase. It makes digital yuan, the e-CNY, the most widely adopted CBDC in the world. As the Bank of China reported in the post on its official WeChat page on Oct. 10, by the end of the summer, the number of transactions made in 15 provinces within the CBDC pilot framework had reached 360 million. More than 5.6 million merchant stores already support the digital yuan as a legal tender, according to the post. The …

China accounts for 84% of all blockchain applications filed worldwide, according to the latest data shared by the country’s government official. China has steered clear of the cryptocurrency market. However, the Beijing government has been supportive of the underlying blockchain technology. The country has actively promoted the use of blockchain tech over the years, and thus the high percentage of blockchain patents isn’t surprising. President Xi Jinping has also played a key role in promoting the nascent blockchain technology. In 2019, the President called upon citizens, tech companies and stakeholders of the ecosystem to actively participate and innovate with the …

Despite enforcing a major cryptocurrency ban one year ago, the Chinese government still protects local crypto investors as crypto is recognized as virtual property protected by the law. One of the world’s most hostile countries toward Bitcoin (BTC), China has not yet banned the possession of cryptocurrencies, according to David Lesperance, founder of Lesperance & Associates law firm. Crypto holders in China are protected by the law in case of theft, misappropriation or breach of a loan agreement, Lesperance told Cointelegraph. He emphasized that crypto exchanges are still banned in China. The lawyer referred to a recent Chinese court case …

The China Banking Association, China Internet Finance Association, and Securities Association of China issued a joint statement warning the public about the “hidden risks” of investing in nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. In a Wednesday notice, the three associations launched initiatives aimed at encouraging innovation in the crypto and blockchain space focused on NFTs as well as “resolutely curb[ing] the tendency of NFT financialization and securitization” to reduce the risks around illicit activities. The China Banking Association said member institutions should not consider NFTs assets like securities, precious metals, and other financial products. In addition, cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), …

People’s Bank of China, the central bank of the country, claimed in a recent note that China's share in the global Bitcoin (BTC) transactions has rapidly dropped from over 90% to 10%. The Financial Stability Bureau of the Chinese central bank released a comprehensive note on Wednesday discussing the impact of the crypto crackdown on the financial markets. The official notice claimed that all peer-to-peer exchanges in the country had been eradicated, which eventually curbed the hype around digital currency transactions. A Google translated version of the note read: “The global proportion of Bitcoin transactions in China dropped rapidly from …

Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent has filed for a virtual concerts patent with the Chinese National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) according to business data-tracker Qichacha. The application comes as Chinese companies race to secure Metaverse trademarks. Even though the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) took a strong stance against the Metaverse and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in November, stating that it would track them with Anti-Money Laundering tools, more than a thousand Chinese companies have submitted over 16,000 metaverse-related trademark applications according to a report from Chinese news outlet, The Paper. Despite the warnings, the Chinese multinational technology and video-game colossus Tencent, …