This weekly roundup of news from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate top industry news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and blockchain integrations in businesses.

This week the word “evergrande” found its way into the vocabulary of every western investor. After years of watching the company’s soccer team on TV and drinking their bottled water, Crypto Twitter was the last place the man in Shanghai expected to find him. After over $ 300 billion in debt, all kinds of rumors swirled, causing Hong Kong-listed stocks to drop 80% earlier in the week and a massive crypto sell-off.

Wrong reading of her tea leaves

The western experts were divided on the subject, with Jim Cramer. from CNBC urging People to hedge their crypto exposure until the news got more stable. Famed investor Ray Dalio was less bothered by the news, claiming that debt is manageable and is unlikely to do much structural damage to the economy. Be that as it may, the global media, politicians and academics have falsely predicted China’s economic collapse since it became clear that the country was moving away from westernization and democratic ideals in the early 2000s.

Hence, it is always wise to enjoy these dramatic stories with caution, especially since the Chinese government has a number of stability levers that include: to convince to help other economic actors. For this reason, betting on total collapse would mean buying into what China watchers believe should happen and not what they believe will happen.

RMB on the blockchain

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the Lingang Special Area in Shanghai was given permission to do business with an offshore stablecoin linked to the RMB. this Notice comes after months of tough regulations against the use of cryptocurrencies that had led many people to conclude that the public blockchain could have a finite future domestically.

CNHC’s website is promoting a compliant version of the RMB-denominated DeFi

The stablecoin project called CNHC allows users to deposit assets to mint the CNHC stablecoin token. According to website, the project plans to become the gateway of traditional finance to the blockchain world while helping to increase the use of RMB abroad.

The public blockchain that makes this project possible is Conflux, a multi-chain network founded by academics from Tsinghua University, China’s top university. Conflux has now grown into a global network that is one of the few public chains to have received some kind of blessing from the Chinese government. On the news, Christian Oertel, Head of Global Expansions at Conflux, responded by saying:

“With the recent announcement by Chinese monetary authorities to help Shanghai take a leadership role in the free use of renminbi in Shanghai’s Lingang Special Area, Conflux Network and Shanghai Maritime are promoting the Shanghai Free Trade Zone’s latest reform exploration to internationalize the RMB.”

Asia’s largest custodian on the rise

Cobo Custody completed a $ 40 million raise to complete what they call DeFi-as-a-Service. The custodian, which has a relatively low profile in the western investment scene compared to companies like BitGo, is now looking to open up more institutional avenues for DeFi.

Cobo Custody is known in Asian crypto circles, especially in the mining scene, where the founder of Cobo was an early pioneer as the founder of F2Pool. The Series B round was led by DST Global, A&T Capital and IMO Ventures and aims to acquire additional regulatory licenses that will ensure the company stays on the right side of AML laws. Cobo Custody is currently working with institutions such as Deribit, WOO X, BitMart and Babel Finance.

FTX is gaining ground on Huobi

In the area of ​​stock market competition, FTX is sliding up the volume leaderboard and appears poised to put Huobi in third place behind Binance and OKEx. This will break the hegemony that Huobi, Binance, and OKEx, called HBO, have held in the markets for years. The two exchanges are already the same in terms of derivatives volume, but Huobi has a slight lead on spot size.

The competition for fourth place got much tighter this week. Source: FTX volume monitor

This is evidence of both FTX’s staggering growth in recent years and a diversifying Chinese user base that either uses more foreign exchanges or simply trades less in light of increasingly stringent regulations in China. Many of China’s largest trading teams have been relocated overseas, making them less dependent on China’s domestic products. In response, Huobi has moved outward, focusing on products such as institutional asset custody in Hong Kong, where they are claim to have over $ 1 billion in AUM.

On September 23, Huobi Technology announced the signing of an agreement with the Ministry of Investment and Enterprise of Kyrgyzstan State to cooperate in the implementation of cryptocurrency trading projects. https://t.co/LCVuwYSEkG

– Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 23, 2021

Huobi also announced that it will work with the Kyrgyz government to implement further cryptocurrency trading projects. After the news from El Salvador, it will be interesting to see if smaller countries in Central and Southeast Asia take a more open stance on the adoption of cryptocurrencies, and perhaps give some of the larger Chinese players room to jump in and grow.

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