China fallout hits mining; Korea digital custody competition heats up

Transcript

The struggle is real, our Forkast team uncovering some big clues on why China’s crypto activities ban is maybe just part of the bigger strategy. There might have been some ah-ha moments in our editorial meeting today.

Welcome to the daily Forkast September 28, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News covering all things blockchain.

Well, the fallout from China’s crypto ban continues to shake the industry, with reverberations now affecting parts of the crypto mining sector. We’re going to take a look at the latest moves and more coming up.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

First up, the impact of Friday’s crypto ban announcement by the Chinese government continues to spread, with the focus firmly on the crypto mining sector now.

That’s right, tech giant Alibaba has announced it will ban sales of crypto mining machines. Meanwhile, despite a clampdown on crypto mining in Inner Mongolia that began in May authorities have just seized around 10,000 mining rigs from a government-operated tech park.

Now that raises questions over how effective the government’s mining clampdown stance has been and how China’s crypto activities ban might be the latest weapon in that fight.

Forkast.News Timmy Shen reports.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has announced it will ban the sale of cryptocurrency mining equipment from October 8.

The prohibition will apply to both mining hardware and software. In addition, it will also apply to tutorials and strategies on how to obtain virtual currencies. This is on top of the ban it has on the sale of virtual currencies.

And mining pool, SparkPool, which was ranked second in terms of Ethereum mining hashrate Tuesday afternoon Asia time, according to data from BTC.com, confirmed via a statement on its website, that services to new users from Mainland China have been suspended. It goes on to say that all services and operations from existing users, both in China and abroad, will be shut down from Thursday evening, Asia time.

Meanwhile, the clampdown on crypto mining may not have been as effective as the government hoped. The region of Inner Mongolia, which is heavily reliant on coal-powered electricity generation, implemented a ban on crypto mining in May, in an attempt to meet national government carbon reduction goals.

But according to local media reports, authorities recently discovered and seized 10,100 crypto mining rigs that were being used in an illicit mining operation at the government-operated SME Pioneer Park.

The seizure comes amid an ongoing power shortage, which has been blamed on a shortage of coal supplies and toughening emissions standards. It has seen power being rationed in parts of north-eastern China.

One expert told Forkast.News that with discussion on carbon neutrality, trending on social media in China, implementation of prior policy may not have been working as well as had been hoped.

“Still, about 50% of the mining is happening in China. What do you do? Going to cut it. And Beijing doesn’t like the crypto mining anyway. You know, we have our own e-CNY, it’s rolling out soon. So I don’t see why they were not doing it, the fact that they’re just escalating the intensity, just showing maybe, you know, things were not as good as they thought.”

With so many big players making moves to exit the industry, it seems policy may now be tough enough.

For Forkast.News, I’m Timmy Shen, Taipei, Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Korea’s NH NongHyup Bank is jumping on the crypto custody bandwagon, making it the third major bank in South Korea to enter the crypto custody business after KB Kookmin and Shinhan Bank.

NongHyup is doing just that with a strategic investment in Cardo. The joint venture aims to provide a comprehensive service for cryptocurrencies and also create tokens for other assets like real estate, art, maybe even a warehouse full of your favorite soju.

Forkast.News, Danny Park reports.

The joint venture started out under the name of Hexlant custody last July, following a memorandum of understanding between NH Nonghyup Bank, blockchain developer Hexlant and law firm BKL.

Since changing its name to Cardo this year, the crypto custody service has submitted its business report to be registered under the Financial Intelligence Unit.

Now, NH NongHyup says it has made a strategic equity investment in Cardo.

NH NongHyup CEO Kwon Jun-hak says, “with this equity investment, the bank has secured competitiveness in digital finance through cooperation with leading companies of the new digital technologies. Adding that Nonghyup plans to expand its investments in smaller digital technology businesses.”

NongHyup’s investment in Cardo follows KB Kookmin betting on Koda and Shinhan on KDAC.

Cardano currently stores and manages Bitcoin, Ethereum and Klaytn, but has bigger plans.

They include expanding its horizons into custody of a variety of assets that can be tokenized, such as real estate, or works of art, as well as developing a digital asset payment business, involving NFTs and stop token offerings.

Broadening its client base is also one of Cardo’s projects. Aiming to attract millennial and Generation Z investors by incorporating elements of gaming and entertainment to its financial services.

Last month, NongHyup renewed its partnership with crypto exchanges Bithumb and Coinone, and now Cardo.

It seems Nonghyup bank is going all out for crypto, while many others remain wary. We will see a fortune really does favor the bold.

For Forkast.News, I’m Danny Park.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more visit Forkast.News and don’t forget to subscribe and click like. Your support actually means we get to keep doing this for you, and our team actually does a little cheer every time we see a new light can follow. So it’s good for morale.

I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.