China
Shanghai includes metaverse in its development plan
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 ...
‘Net neutral’ — Rising Bitcoin exchange balances could be due to Huobi Chinese user block
Bitcoin (BTC) balances rising on exchanges may not be a sign of investors preparing to sell, new research argues. Unveiling the latest data from across exchanges on Dec. 28, Glassnode on-chain analyst TXMC pointed the finger at fresh changes in China for rising balances elsewhere. Binance “absorbing” orphaned Huobi users The end of December is seeing nerves fray as a rangebound BTC price combines with increased inflows to exchanges. A classic indicator that traders are at least arming themselves to de-risk in the event of further price weakness, Binance has been particularly closely eyed as its BTC stocks rise. At the same time, however, Chinese investors are being frozen out of international spot trading venues in the aftermath of China’s ongoing crackdown on cryptocurre...
Law Decoded: Three regulatory trends of 2021, Dec. 20–27
It is that time of the year: Singular events must be abandoned in favor of end-of-year, big-picture narratives and yearly lessons learned. As many governments across the globe finally had to face the rapidly mainstreaming realm of digital finance, the year is packed with developments in crypto policy and regulation that are impossible to fit into a neat little summary. However, it is possible to try and distill several major trends that have come to the fore during the past 12 months, and that will keep shaping the relationship among societies, state power and the crypto space as we roll into 2022. Below is the concise version of the latest “Law Decoded” newsletter. For the full breakdown of policy developments over the last week, register for the full newsletter below. U.S. Congress notic...
Baidu metaverse app would take 6 years for a full launch, VP says
The Chinese internet giant Baidu doesn’t expect to fully launch its XiRang metaverse app soon despite the app’s initial would debut on Monday, according to a senior executive. Baidu vice president Ma Jie believes that it is still “negative six” years to full XiRang’s launch, CNBC reported on Thursday. He noted that the development of the app started in December 2020. Ma spoke of “Create 2021,” Baidu’s upcoming annual developers’ event, which the company promotes as the first Chinese conference to be hosted in a metaverse space through XiRang. The app will reportedly handle up to 100,000 virtual members interacting with each other using metaverse avatars at the three-day conference starting on Monday. The exec noted that Baidu intends to create an open-source platform targeting metaver...
China’s state-run news agency to launch NFT collection
In an announcement made on Wednesday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency will issue its first series of nonfungible token (NFT) collectibles. The move is a thumbs up to blockchain technology previously shunned by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In an official notice, Xinhua plans to publish 10,000 copies of 11 photos taken by journalists in 2021. The stride into NFTs is puzzling in light of recent events in the world’s second-largest economy. Following a nationwide crypto crackdown where Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) mining was banned, China has recently taken aim at NFTs and metaverses and proposed that they should be heavily monitored. Despite the anti-crypto sentiment, tech giants Tencent and Huawei were not discouraged from pursuing trademarks in the metaverse. Elsewhe...
Beijing court rejects monetary compensation in Bitcoin mining contract plea
A district court in Beijing has rejected monetary compensation in a Bitcoin (BTC) mining contract plea against a blockchain company. The Chaoyang District People’s Court on Wednesday deemed the Bitcoin mining contract between the plaintiff and the blockchain firm “invalid,” the South China Morning Post reported on Dec. 16. The plaintiff in the case reportedly paid 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) to the blockchain firm for deployment of mining machines, but incurred losses on his investment. The Beiijng based plaintiff claimed he earned only 18.5 Bitcoin on his investment and demanded an additional 217.17 BTC in compensation for his losses. The court rejected the plea and also directed the Sichuan branch of the National Development and Reform Commission to look into any illegal mining going ...
2 key Bitcoin trading metrics suggest BTC price has bottomed
Bitcoin (BTC) has been struggling to sustain the $47,500 support since the Dec. 4 crash, a movement that wiped out over $840 million in leveraged long futures contracts. The downside move came after the emergence of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus and recent data showing U.S. inflation hitting a 40-year high. Bitcoin/USD price at FTX. Source: TradingView While newcomers might have been scared by the 26% price correction over the past month, whales and avid investors like MicroStrategy added to their positions. On Dec. 9, MicroStrategy announced that they had acquired 1,434 Bitcoin, which increased their stake to 122,478 BTC. According to some analysts, the rationale behind Bitcoin’s weakness was the contagion fear that Evergrande, a leading Chinese property developer, defaulte...
Eight-thousanders: the 14 highest peaks in the world
The eight-thousanders are so ferocious that only 44 people have summited them all. We explain why they bewitch climbers all across the globe Most boys grow out of their fascination with mountains and the great outdoors. Those that do not usually end up on the side of a mountain, asking ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ But, as the saying goes, the best alpinists have the worst memories and so they venture once again into the ether. My fascination with mountains was piqued as a child when I visited the Glen Coe region in the Highlands of Scotland and eyed the gullies of Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain. This fascination has only grown through the years. My bookcase continues to expand with mountaineering books, from thrilling first-person accounts of difficult first ascents to thick bio...
Netease Cloud Village Stock Slips 2.5% Following Hong Kong IPO
Chinese music streaming company Cloud Village finally had its initial public stock offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday (Dec. 2) after postponing its plans in August amid a Chinese regulatory crackdown. Investors’ initial reaction was underwhelming as Cloud Village’s share price closed at 199.90 Hong Kong dollars ($25.66), about 2.5% below the 205.00 Hong Kong dollars ($26.31) IPO price. Tech giant Netease spun off the company, which runs NetEase Cloud Music, in an offering of 16 million shares — 7.7% of the outstanding shares — that raised 41.5 billion Hong Kong dollars ($421 million). NetEase gained approval for the spin-off on Aug. 2 but delayed the listing indefinitely about a week later after Beijing’s tightening regulations brought attention to publicly traded Chinese...
The Simpsons Episode with Tiananmen Square Reference Cut from Disney+ Hong Kong
Disney+ launched in Hong Kong earlier this month, finally giving the city’s residents access to all its various IPs. Well, almost all of them; it turns out one particular episode of The Simpsons has been omitted from the streaming platform due to its references to Tiananmen Square. Season 16, Episode 12 of The Simpsons finds Aunt Selma heading to China to adopt a baby, with Homer posing as her husband. When the family attempts to flee the country with the newborn in hand, they end up in Tiananmen Square, where a sign reads, “Tien An Men Square: On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” Selma is then stopped by the head of the adoption agency as she arrives in a tank, making a visual reference to the famed Tank Man from the 1989 Beijing protests and crackdown. As one might expect,...
The seven second summits: a tougher challenge
The seven second summits are considered to be a much harder mountaineering challenge than the more popular seven summits Previously, I’ve written about my dream of climbing the seven summits and laid out a realistic if not deeply challenging and expensive program of how to achieve that goal. This week I look at the seven second summits; the second-highest mountains on each continent. The highest summits are a dream of mine, but I draw the line at the second-highest – they’re simply too scary for an amateur enthusiast like me! Introducing the seven second summits Alpinism author Jon Krakauer wrote in Into Thin Air (one of my favourite mountaineering books) that it would be a bigger challenge to climb the second-highest peak of each continent instead of the highest. An ob...
China Bans “Sissy Men” From Television
China has announced that effeminate men are banned from television. This homophobic crackdown is being touted as a “national rejuvenation,” according to Deadline, as state TV regulators call to “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics.” In signaling the kind of men who were undesirable, China used the insulting slang phrase, “niang pao,” which could literally be translated as, “girlie guns,” according to Deadline. The ban extended to “vulgar internet celebrities,” and regulators also warned broadcasters away from promoting admiration of wealth. Instead, television should “vigorously promote excellent Chinese traditional culture, revolutionary culture, and advanced socialist culture.” Advertisement Related Video This “national rejuvenation” initiative ...
