Timothy Li discusses the event and the interest in fintech from investors in his most recent journal entry on Crowdfund Insider; lists some of the top investors, outlines companies attending and shares some pictures from his time in China. Source
ICOINFO, one of China's largest ICO exchange platforms, announces the suspension of new project launches, awaiting relevant regulatory rules; users will not be able to add value to their accounts during the suspension. Source
Investors in China are increasingly looking for an unbiased, lower cost option for managing their wealth; robo advisors are beginning to fill that void; the new firms are helping the non ultra rich access markets and helping the wealthy allocate their money without fear of a broker who is thinking of the corporate firm; though the data on robo advisors in China is currently thin, China Merchants Securities Co. believes that assets managed by robo advisors will reach over $750 billion by 2020. Source
At LendIt's Lang Di Fintech conference this July in Shanghai, Up Financial CEO Steven Yuan talked about the power of big data and artificial intelligence for the economy; he calls this intelligent finance and believes that using these tools will allow for investing to come to the masses; he also thinks that the tools can help to lift up the broader economy; he points to a report by Boston Consulting Group about China's private investable assets in the next three years and believes there is an enormous opportunity to leverage wealth management; Up Financial's goal is to create a personalized new financial system for individual investors and big data plus artificial intelligence will allow for them to potentially reach these goals. Source
This week, we look at:
The Bitcoin money supply being worth as much as the M1 of several countries
The Visa/Plaid deal DOJ anti-trust filing and the PayPal integration of Bitcoin
Understanding Central Bank Digital Currencies in the context of card networks, payment processors, and digital economies
Chinese CBDC and how it could relate to stopping the $34B Ant Financial IPO
How a CBDC ecosystem is like an operating system, rather than a payment rail
Chinese regulators are preparing new rules that target the businesses of the country's small-loan lenders; recent rules have capped P2P loans at Rmb200,000 ($28,925) for an individual and Rmb1 million ($144,626) for a company however small-loan lenders fall far below these thresholds and regulators fear the companies do not have adequate risk controls; 2016 data shows China has 8,673 small-loan companies with loans totaling Rmb927 billion ($134.1 billion) and this is in comparison to approximately Rmb673 billion ($97.3 billion) outstanding from P2P lenders; China's small-loan lenders are active in the market, offering a range of lending solutions and reporting small-loan asset securitizations of Rmb82 billion ($11.9 billion) in 2016; as the country continues its focus on tightening regulation for China's P2P lending industry, Li Junfeng, director of the financial inclusion department at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, says it will be specifically addressing new regulations that target the country's small lenders. Source
Bitcoin blockchain split on August 1, and rumors are that Bitmain CEO Wu Jihan is the man behind the split; Wu Jihan is an aggressive supporter for Bitcoin Unlimited, which believes that the size of these blocks should be increased; Wu Jihan's company, Bitmain, is the world's largest bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer; the company also runs the world's biggest mining pool, AntPool. Source
Bitcoin reported substantial gains in 2016, increasing 120% and 57% in the last three months of the year; on January 1 the cryptocurrency exchange rate versus the dollar increased to over $1,000; equity strategist, Christopher Wood of CLSA notes that trading in China has concurrently been high with trading on the China BTC Bitcoin Exchange increasing from Rmb 1 billion ($140 million) in September to Rmb 27.8 billion ($4 billion) in December; in an article from Asia Times, the source also reported that China accounted for 42% of Bitcoin's trading in the first six months of 2016; one factor significantly affecting the increased trading volume has been the weakening of China's currency causing increased interest in foreign investments. Source
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In a recent trip to China, LendIt Co-Founder Jason Jones sat down with CBN for an interview which centered around...
Chinese authorities on Monday ordered a ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs); a PBoC statement ordered that ICO activities should be halted starting from Monday, and ICO platforms should not engage in exchange services between fiat currencies, virtual coins and tokens; two of China's leading ICO platforms, ICOAGE and ICOINFO, had already halted services before the official statement came out. Source