Chinese RMB stablecoin issuer’s Shanghai office reportedly deserted after police raid, and WeChat offers Bitcoin prices — but for how long?
RMB stablecoin team allegedly arrested
On May 31, local news outlet PANewsLab
On another front, according to a research report published by multichain wallet provider BitKeep, notable crypto projects such as Avalanche, Conflux, EOS, and Fantom have all joined Hong Kong’s Web3Hub ecosystem fund unveiled in April. With a budget of $10 million, the fund will incentivize Web3 projects to set up subsidiaries or headquarters in the special administrative region of China (SAR). The fund is headed by Paul Chan Mo-Po, financial secretary of Hong Kong SAR.
Despite the growing traction, BitKeep researchers reminded that HK regulations remain strict for the time being:
The new regulations clearly limit the types of tokens that can be traded and the types of services that exchanges can provide. Cryptocurrencies must meet the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) strict regulations, which emphasize that only non-security tokens can be traded, have a history of at least 12 months, and the token has been included in two cryptocurrency indices.
In addition, exchanges are prohibited from providing wealth management products, as well as the provision of lending and deposit services, along with derivative transactions such as perpetual crypto contracts. “However, the regulator recognizes the importance of derivatives trading in the encrypted market and will conduct further research and consideration,” researchers noted.
WeChat allows BTC price quotes
As of June 1, WeChat, China’s largest social media app with over 1 billion users, has indexed Bitcoin price quotes in its search queries. The move is significant, considering that China has pretty much banned all crypto-related activities such as exchanges, crypto mining, and fiat-crypto on-ramping since 2021.
However, if history is any guide, the WeChat Bitcoin search query probably won’t last for long. Formerly, billion-user platforms China Central Television and Chinese TikTok variant Douyin have allowed something similar, only to have authorities pull them down just days after launch.
All Nippon Airways launches NFT marketplace
On May 30, All Nippon Airways (ANA), the largest airline in Japan with over $12.2 billion in revenue in the last fiscal year, launched its aeronautical-themed NFT marketplace dubbed “ANA GranWhale” Developers wrote:
“NFTs have been used mainly in fields such as art and music as a technology for expressing ownership of digital assets. This time, the ANA Group will apply NFT to the aviation industry.”
As its inaugural step, ANA GranWhale will debut aerial photographer Luke Ozawa’s first-ever digital photo in his career as an NFT with an asking price of 100,000 Yen. The second installment, starting on June 7, will feature a 3-D model NFT conversion of the first special paint Boeing 787 aircraft launched by ANA. The NFT marketplace’s development began last August as part of ANA’s vision of building a Web3 virtual travel platform.
“With a view to commercializing NFTs as specialty products from various parts of Japan, we aim to improve the value of customer experience, including local and overseas, through the ‘GranWhale NFT marketplace.’”
Fed inspires Astar Network to revamp tokenomics
On May 28, Sota Watanabe, the founder of Japanese blockchain Astar (ASTR) Network, expressed his desire to revamp the protocol’s tokenomics, saying that even the U.S. government was targeting an inflation rate of 2%, compared to levels of around 8.4% currently. Drawing further inspiration from the Federal Reserve, Watanabe proposed mirroring the Fed’s meeting decisions every quarter or every six months and updating the blockchain’s token inflation rate on a variety of factors, writing:
“Decentralizing one of the roles of the FED can be a challenge but also an interesting trial.”
The crypto executive said he wished to either fix ASTR’s total supply and make the inflation rate smaller and smaller such as in Bitcoin, or automatically decide the inflation rate based on network usage, as in Ethereum, or use a mix of both models.
A multichain decentralized application proposal, Astar recently launched the second iteration of its smart contracts supporting both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) WebAssembly Virtual Machine (WASM VM) on its mainnet for developing new cross-chain apps.
bitFlyer and the Travel Rule
According to a recent announcement, Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer will comply with the country’s Financial Services Agency’s new Travel Rule starting June 1. The Travel Rule states that a crypto asset exchange operator sending crypto assets at the request of a user shall provide specific information about the sender and the recipient to the exchange operator receiving the transfer.
In addition, further restrictions are imposed on crypto transfers to any of the 21 countries, such as Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Bahamas, Hong Kong, and the U.S., utilizing the Coinbase-led Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST).
bitFlyer clients who wish to transfer crypto to any of the 21 TRUST countries can only send Bitcoin or Ethereum and select ERC-20 tokens. Such requirements do not apply to transfers to addresses identified with any of the remaining non-TRUST countries. As told by bitFlyer:
“The purpose of the travel rule is to prevent the ability for terrorists and other criminals from using digital fund transfer systems as well as track unauthorized use.”
