China’s Supreme Court adds digital currency to list of illegal fundraising methods

February 24, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Beijing

The new policy change aims to mitigate risks arising from digital currency fundraising and the absorption of funds from the public.

China’s hardline policy on crypto took another turn on Thursday as the Supreme Court of the country revised its judicial interpretation for illegal fundraising to include digital currency transactions.

The Chinese Supreme Court issued a revised version of its "Decision on Amending the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Specific Application of Law in the Trial of Criminal Cases of Illegal Fund Raising".

Just In: For the first time, the Supreme Court of China has included virtual currency transactions in the judicial interpretation of illegal fundraising, which is mainly to punish the behavior of absorbing funds in the name of virtual currency. https://t.co/hr2NspSYf8
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) February 24, 2022

The revision also improved upon the conviction and punishment for crimes related to illegal fundraising. While maintaining four of the original characteristics of the law, it added crime, online lending, virtual currency transactions, financial leasing and a few others to the revised list, local media reported.

The inclusion of cryptocurrency transactions in the new revised judicial interpretation would mean that those found illegally raising funds from the public in the name of digital currencies would be punishable under the newly revised law. The new law would come into effect from March 1, 2022.

China’s strict crypto policy is nothing new as the country has announced more than a dozen bans against various crypto-related activities over the past decade. One of the biggest crackdowns came in 2021 when a committee comprising of some of the top regulators came out to issue a blanket ban on all crypto-related activities.

The new guidelines declared all crypto transactions illegal in mainland China and prohibited foreign crypto exchanges from offering any of their services. Since then, the state regulators have continued to implement the policies and have weeded out the majority of centralized mining and trading from the country.

Bitmain signs 500MW joint venture with sustainable BTC miner Merkle Standard

February 11, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Antminer

Sustainable Bitcoin mining gets a boost from the joint venture between mostly hydro-powered BTC miners Merkle Standard and infrastructure provider Bitmain.

Beijing-based Bitmain has partnered with a United States-based sustainable Bitcoin miner, Merkle Standard, which will contribute capital investment, expertise and parts.

As part of the joint venture, Bitmain will contribute to the development of up to 500 MW of clean digital mining infrastructure at Merkle Standard's hydro-powered facilities in Eastern Washington.

Bitmain is a household name in the Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem, famed for the Antminer brand, the name behind popular Bitcoin ASIC miners the S9 and S19. Merkle Standard claims to be a carbon-conscious BTC miner, keen to become net carbon negative by year-end. Merkle Standard will install up to 150,000 Bitmain mining machines thanks to the venture.

Ruslan Zinurov, CEO of Merkle Standard, told Cointelegraph that the partnership with Bitmain will “catapult our growth plan of building one of North America’s largest sustainable digital asset mining platforms.”

In a further commentary, Josh Zappala, chief strategy officer at Merkle Standard, underlined the benefits BTC mining brings to the social fabric of local communities. With aspirations to become one of the area’s largest employers, the joint venture will introduce “35–50 full-time jobs to the site,” while “supporting local business.” He told Cointelegraph:

“Due to the flexible characteristics of the data center’s power load, we are suited to be the ideal power consumer for our power providers and look forward to providing additional support to the community.”

No strangers to scrutiny, Merkle Standard’s move reflects the trend of BTC miners worldwide upping their ESG credentials. The Bitcoin Mining Council boasted a sustainable energy mix of 58.5% in the fourth quarter of 2021, while miners in Norway are even using waste heat to dry out lumber.

According to the press release, data center development has entered the first phase of production at the Merkle Standard mothership in Eastern Washington. The 225MW site will expand to 500MW by the second quarter of 2022.

The new equipment, including Bitmain’s S19J Pro, S19 XP, and S19+ hydro miners will come online in Eastern Washington, although Merkle Standard nods towards “various expansion locations” in 2022. Ultimately, the joint venture is one part of CEO Zinurov’s vision to “achieve industry-leading power efficiency.”

Shanghai includes metaverse in its development plan

December 31, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Beijing

Shanghai’s five-year plan calls for the use of a metaverse in public services, businesses, entertainment and industrial manufacturing.

Shanghai, China’s most crowded city, is looking for ways to use a metaverse in public services over the next five years.

Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology’s five-year development plan for the electronic information industry listed four frontiers for exploration, and one of them is the metaverse.

According to a CNBC report, the paper called for promoting the metaverse’s use in public services, business offices, social leisure, industrial manufacturing, production safety and electronic games. The commission plans to encourage further study and development of underlying technologies, such as sensors, real-time interactions and blockchain technology.

China’s interest in new technology has been unwavering in recent years, and its efforts to establish a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and its use of digital biometric hardware wallets for the virtual yuan have cemented it as a leader in the issuance of a CBDC.

In March, China’s State Council released its five-year development plan that included many of these same fronts for exploration. As reported by Cointelegraph, the term “blockchain” was used for the first time in China’s 14th five-year plan, a document that outlines the country’s economic goals for the next five years, which runs from 2021 through 2025.

The metaverse has become an area of interest for many major companies in recent months. In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta in order to bank on the popularity of the term metaverse.

Despite the People’s Bank of China’s warning on metaverse and nonfungible tokens in November, over 1,000 Chinese businesses have filed tens of thousands of trademark applications that reference the term. More than 1,360 Chinese businesses have applied for 8,534 trademarks, according to the South China Morning Post.

Chinese companies are in the process of developing metaverse technologies, with Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba among those aggressively working on related projects. Last week, Baidu debuted its XiRang metaverse app, which will fully launch in six years.

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China wants US senators to ‘stop making trouble’ out of digital yuan

July 21, 2021 Coin Telegraph

2022

China's Foreign Ministry responded to U.S. senators' claim regarding the digital yuan's function as a tracking and tracing tool during the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

The heat is rising between the United States lawmakers and Chinese officials even before the Olympic flame ignited at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian addressed U.S. senators’ warning letter to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee regarding the use of digital yuan at the Olympic games next year.

Calling for the U.S. politicians to “abide by the spirit stipulated in the Olympic Charter,” Lijian asked them to “stop making sports a political matter and stop making troubles out of the digital currency in China,” the South China Morning Post reported.

Claiming that the recent actions revealed the ignorance, Lijian suggested U.S. lawmakers “figure out what a digital currency really is.”

Earlier this week, Republican senators Marsha Blackburn, Roger Wicker and Cynthia Lummis wrote a letter to U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee board chair Susanne Lyons. Highlighting the allegation that digital yuan can be "tracked and traced" by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the three requested officials prevent U.S. athletes from using or accepting Chinese digital currency.

Claiming the Chinese Communist Party could use the digital currency to surveil visiting athletes upon their return to the United States, senators said the new features of digital yuan enables Chinese officials “to know the exact details of what someone purchased and where.”

In the letter, the three requested a briefing on the topic for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation within 30 days.

On the other hand, China regards the Beijing Winter Olympics, slated for next year, as the first test of China’s central bank digital currency by foreign users.

Speaking at the Boao Forum for Asia in April, PBoC deputy governor Li Bo said, “For the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, we were trying to make e-CNY available not only to domestic users but also to international athletes and like visitors.”

Beijing