GCR

What Crypto insiders news are reading on Asia.

Happy Sunday! Given feedback from many of our readers, we are going to go with a different format for the weekend emails. We will no longer be sending out our long Weekly write-up piece on the weekend. Instead, we will be sending out the long write-ups every Wednesday.

The weekend piece going forward will solely be a list of all the top news that happened in the previous week.

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Quote of the week

“There are some attempts in different geographic regions [to do blockchain], so there are a few sandbox programs. It’s actually very common in the UK, and some places in the US because the financial laws are very complicated. For a fintech startup, you want to innovate but you don’t want to break the law. So the local government or regions gives you a sandbox environment to let you do experiments on a small scale.

We are actually one of the former candidates in a local sandbox program, supported by the government of Guiyang, which is so-called the Big Data Center in China, in the southwest part of China. And I know for a fact there are there other sandboxes set up by other governments including Tsingdao in Shandong, north part of China, and places like Shenzhen in the Guangdong area. But these are still local government self-driven kind of experiments, and in China I think we are still waiting for the high level policies. which department will be leading this and be in charge, where the regulations will come from.”

– One of the many great insights from Hope Liu, CEO, and co-founder, of EximChain in our podcast conversation along with Ryan Fang, co-founder and COO of Ankr. Podcast to come out tomorrow!

Both of these teams are based in the states, and EximChain has ICO-ed while Ankr is in the process of launching. Both Ryan and Hope grew up in China and have unique perspectives on the Chinese and Asian markets.

Top Clicked Links and News from This Past Week

Coin and Exchange News

Decentralized Binance prototype is expected within a couple of months. http://bit.ly/2ukOlRC

CryptoKitties to roll out a mobile app on HTC’s flagship phone, the U12+, through a partnership with the Taiwanese phone maker. http://bit.ly/2zzd9v0. Be sure to check out our podcast with Benny Giang, co-founder of Cryptokitties, on their go to market experience in Asia.

Canada’s “Coinbase” is planning to launch a cryptocurrency exchange in Japan. http://bit.ly/2u9oTiu

QTUM Patrick Dai tweeted out a digital book called “Mastering QTUM?—?Developer’s Guide to QTUM”, covering in detailed instructions on running QTUM, ERC20, and crowdsale. http://bit.ly/2uk767H

China-based cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin to launch a branch in the U.S. to offer fiat-to-crypto trading services between USD and bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ethereum andethereum classic. http://bit.ly/2uin035

Li Xiaolai, partner of INBLOCK, has resigned from his role as managing partner of the $1 billion Hangzhou Xiong’An Blockchain Fund after allegedly defamatory comments were made against him by Didi co-founder Chen Weixing. http://bit.ly/2zor6f7

People’s Bank of China Vice President said that in the near future, the committee will be announcing a new method to block ICO companies that still have activities in China from accessing Chinese people. http://bit.ly/2ubA6iA

Liu Cixin, author of The Three-body Problem, will join IDG Capital as Chief Thinker. http://bit.ly/2ujvqaK

Highlights from the China Internet Conference: The Future of Blockchain. http://bit.ly/2uiJgKt

The dilemma of consortium blockchain projects in China. http://bit.ly/2um7aDY

Chinese police crack down on $1.5 billion cryptocurrency World Cup gambling ring. http://bit.ly/2utDiWc

*China Media* Korean regulators have dubbed blockchain-related technology as the “Fourth Industry”, and just declared that “fourth industry” companies operating in Korea will be tax-free, regardless of which country the company originates from. Google translated article

In the biggest open ledger initiatives in India to date, automakers and component companies have decided to implement a vendor management system on blockchain technology, potentially porting some 2 bn transactions a year to the new platform. http://bit.ly/2zyh4rP

Authorities in India are likely to choose against a sweeping cryptocurrency ban and treat them as commodities. http://bit.ly/2usbFN9

Ripple Exec: “I think that in our pipeline we have probably 50% of the market in India, either integrated onto Ripple or in the deal, in the sort of pipeline to be signed to India.” http://bit.ly/2uazpGm

What did you guys think of our Global Coin podcast thus far with co-founder and Fortune Cat, Benny Giang, from Cryptokitties? And be sure to check out our latest collaboration with TechBuzz China on their 12th podcast episode Bitmain, with commentary directly from Jimmy Song and Tim Swanson.

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Check our past 5 weekly pieces on Takeaways on Asia Crypto from Techcrunch Zug, Cryptokitties, Binance, Bitmain, and China’s Crypto winners

Off to watch soccer, who are you rooting for??