Huobi deregisters Beijing entity; K-drama takes crypto back in time

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, July 27th, 2021.I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Coming up, Huobi applies to deregister its Beijing entity,

Facebook, in hiring mode for its Novi digital wallet project in the Philippines,
and a K-drama is set to take crypto back in time.

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

First up, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges has applied to deregister its Beijing entity.

According to China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, Huobi made the application last week.

With crypto trading banned in mainland China, like other exchanges, Huobi conducts its trading business outside of the country. But Beijing Huobi Network Technology, which was registered in 2013, is still active, providing internet information services to discuss developments in Blockchain technology.

Huobi told Forkast.News that the entity was registered in the early stages of the company’s development and that as it has not had any business operations, it’s unnecessary, and so they’ve applied for the cancelation.

Huobi is not the first crypto exchange to cancel its mainland registration.

OKEx also applied to deregister one of its mainland company entities, Lekuda in June.

The move caused a shock wave on the market with Huobi Technology’s Hong Kong share price plunging 22% in trading today.

And onto the markets now. Bitcoin down almost 3% at a little over US$ 37,000.

That’s as of 4 p.m. local Hong Kong time today, following Amazon’s denial that accepting payment in Bitcoin could be on the cards.

And this follows a broader mixed trading day in Asia as investors remain cautious over tech regulations in China.

And in the top 10 for crypto currencies, DogeCoin down 9%, while Cardano is down 7.5%.

In the Philippines, Facebook’s Novi is on a little bit of a hiring spree.

Facebook’s career page currently shows five openings in the country for positions dedicated to Novi, including help operations investigator, onboarding coordinator and learning business partner, while it only has one other opening in the entire APAC region.

Novi, which debuted in 2019, is the social media giant’s digital wallet, allowing transactions using the blockchain power digital currency Diem, formerly known as Libra.

It claims to help people access affordable financial services with no hidden charges to add, send, receive or withdraw money, critical for a country where remittances represent about 10% of its entire economy.

Philippines makes a lot of sense for Facebook to roll out Novi. After all, it enjoys almost complete market domination there.

Facebook holds 93% of the country’s social media market share, and almost 97% of Filipinos used Facebook in the third quarter of last year.

And the move can be impactful as the number of unbanked Filipino adults stood at 51.2 million in 2019. That’s 71% of the total adult population who could potentially be the target of Facebook’s new financial venture.

And finally, yesterday, we told you about Hollywood backed animated “Stoner Cats” getting into crypto.

Well, now crypto is set to go back in time in a new K-drama.

“The Age of Money” will be produced by fledgling Korean DeFi digital asset management protocol, BLK Whale in conjunction with drama producer K-Play Contents.

Based in the ancient Joseon dynasty of Korea, the story centers around a king looking to get to the bottom of an invisible brass coin that is causing his country chaos.

BLK Whale and K-Contents say their plan is to create more blockchain themed educational entertainment to promote better understanding.

So we got ancient history and crypto kings, can’t wait to get into this one.

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 next time.