By
Anti Danilevski
August 2nd, 2020
The capital city of Jiangsu province, Nanjing has launched a $1.5 billion blockchain investment fund to boost the token economy and public blockchain projects in China.
Initially resistant to the blockchain development China was one of the first countries to ban cryptocurrency trading and ICOs back in the summer of 2017. However, the Chinese government has softened its stance since the beginning of this year.
Despite its outlawing of many aspects of the cryptocurrency industry, blockchain technology has finally received the support of the government. Speaking at the 2018 National Expert Forum on Manufacturing Powerful Countries, the deputy director of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), Xin Guobin has urged the country to “unite” forces to foster blockchain as a “core” technology for the new digital economy.
This move became a turning point of complicated relationship between China and cryptos. In the aftermath, China has taken a path of wide blockchain adoption facilitating the booming growth of industrial sector by all the means.
Local governments throughout the country have been encouraging the cryptocurrency industry with financial incentives. Consequently, almost 41 percent of all Chinese startups that successfully received funding in 2018 were somehow related to the blockchain technology.
Moreover, China is currently the world’s leader in terms of a number of blockchain patents filed with over 40 patent applications submitted by a digital currency research lab at the People’s Bank of China. The research lab was primary established by PBOC in order to explore commercial applications of blockchain and digital currency payments and to see their integration within the existing monetary system.
Today Nanjing City, one of China’s most historic cities, is launching a $1.5 billion blockchain fund with the aim of boosting the digital currency economy and support public projects based on blockchain. Together with a Beijing-based Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, Nanjing announced the launch of a groundbreaking investment fund during the Public Chain Summit (IPCS) that among other high-level local government officials was attended by Luo Qun, deputy secretary of the Communist Party of China in Nanjing.
The alliance, formed by government research institutes and blockchain companies conceived the massive blockchain investment fund to incorporate new blockchain technologies in a vast range of cross-border infrastructural platforms including healthcare, energy, intellectual property, environmental protection and so forth.
According to the announcement, some of the first beneficiaries of the fund will be TokenX Community and UDAP Foundation. UDAP describes itself as a ‘blockchain middleware service’ and it is going to build a decentralized asset platform in which users can tokenize assets, in the meanwhile TokenX Community’s goal was not disclosed.
The chairman of Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, Yuandao believes industries adopting blockchain technology will bring about countless more chains eventually resulting into more technological breakthroughs.
Notably Nanjing will also help blockchain companies physically relocate their base to the city. At the summit, Wang Xiaohui, deputy chairman of Tsinghua University’s Internet Industry Research Center, said global cooperation, convergence with industries, consensus, and autonomy will be the pillars to the token economy’s success going forward.
