China crypto crackdown fallout; Politician turns influencer in Korea | The Daily Forkast

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, May 25th, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News. Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

In China, the fallout continues following Vice Premier Liu He and the State Council’s warning over a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading behavior last Friday.

Industry players are now changing strategies. Huobi Mall crypto exchange Huobi’s mining arm suspended its Bitcoin mining services and sales of mining equipment to, quote, protect the interests of investors.

BTC.top, one of China’s major mining pools, announced it would no longer provide joint mining services to mainland Chinese users and would operate more crypto mining farms outside of the country. Marie Tatibouet, CMO of crypto exchange Gate.io said she’s never seen Beijing speak out so explicitly against Bitcoin mining.

“So in the short term, we are going to see a drastic downturn in the network hash rate and I’m guessing that’s going to create a lot of havoc in the Bitcoin space. However, in the long term, I do think that it will probably yield a very positive change.”

The positive change, according to Tatibouet, a globalization of miners’ locations giving less influence to any one government.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, more fallout from reports that a proposed bill will force cryptocurrency exchanges to limit their services to professional investors, meaning investors holding a portfolio of US$1 million or more. Now, if the bill is passed, retail investors could be forced to adopt alternative higher risk trading methods, according to Cliff Choi, director of the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong.

“So there’s a disconnect between the law and what software are doing. So retail will always have access to decentralized exchanges, and the law doesn’t have jurisdiction over software.”

Urszula McCormack, one of Asia’s leading blockchain and financial regulatory lawyers, says though it may not be all bad news for retail investors.

“So my great hope is that we’ll have staged implementation as has been proposed, where we’ll start with professional investors and then hopefully expand to retail once the regulator is comfortable that.”

Urszula says there’s no need for retail investors to panic just yet. But for those looking to move their crypto assets out of Hong Kong, she says your best protection is doing your homework, understanding what platforms are available, read those terms and protections that those platforms offer.

All right. Taking a look at Bitcoin now. A bit of a bounce after nearly a week in red, trading up on the day, closing up just over 6% higher at 4:00 pm Hong Kong time, ending the day at a little over US$39,000. And in the top ten for cryptocurrencies, Ethereum continuing to recover from the crypto crash, closing up 15.5%, BNB up nearly 20% and XRP up 17.5% at the end of trading hours in Hong Kong.

In South Korea, a country not particularly known for being positive towards digital currencies as of late, the next big crypto influencer may be a politician. I want to take you to Jeju, South Korea’s largest island, where its governor, Won Hee-ryong is Korea’s rising crypto YouTube. Governor Won has started putting out these YouTube videos to document his experiences dabbling in crypto. In his most recent upload, he revealed his 18% loss six days into his first crypto investment.

“By experiencing and participating in [crypto] with the public, I will discuss how to help the Korean people make better decisions. Moreover, I want to voice out to regulators that [crypto] should not be neglected, and that they should communicate actively with the public to prepare for better solutions.”

But his YouTube ambition does not stop there. Next up for the governor NFTs and DeFi. So, stay tuned.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.