GCR

Happy New Year! We hope you had a restful and blissful holiday season and New Year’s day. 

In case you missed it, be sure to checkout our 2018 GCR Community Predictions on what you should not miss out on in Asia for 2019.

Announcing Guest for Our New Podcast Episode?—?Alex Shin, Co-Founder and Partner at Hashed

Hashed is a Korean blockchain project accelerator and also the largest pure play crypto investment fund in Korea. Alex Shin is a cofounder and partner of the fund. Founded in 2017, Hashed has shaped the Korean blockchain industry through its unique approach to finding and nurturing nascent projects. It has helped accelerated projects such as Terra and ICON.

When I spoke to Alex, I found him to be extremely skillful at bridge building between east and west, and he along with his partners are committed to put Korea on the global crypto map. In this upcoming podcast episode, we discuss Hashed and its investments, Alex’s view on crypto markets now, and Korea’s crypto regulator and the conglomerate participants there.

Listen here:

https://soundcloud.com/user-446231415/hashed-partner-alex-shin-on-his-outlook-for-korea-and-its-regulator-role-in-the-crypto-markets

Top News in Asia from this Week

The adoption of digital payment systems is increasing at such a rapid rate that the People’s Bank of China is concerned about the declining relevance of cash. http://bit.ly/2BYivxY

Layoffs: China’s Bitmain and Huobi layoffs. Bitmain laying off 50–80% of its staff and Huobi reported in Chinese that it’s laying off all of its remaining 14 staff members in Shenzhen. 

Japan conglomerates GMO and MMO pulling out of mining business: http://bit.ly/2F8RgUu

Alibaba predicts 10 tech trends for 2019 including faster deployment of blockchain applications and specialized AI chips: http://bit.ly/2C513ro

China’s CIID has released its latest crypto project ranking, adding Ontology into its evaluation. Bitcoin has been downgraded while the top two positions remain unchanged. http://bit.ly/2RcXaer

Coin and Token News

EOS is a DAO. http://bit.ly/2C0OGMZ

BitTorrent, which pioneered peer-to-peer technology for sharing files on the internet, is creating its own cryptocurrency with the TRON network. http://bit.ly/2C2UKEX

Funding news

Lightspeed China partners raises $560m to invest in China tech companies; http://bit.ly/2C2T3r5

Exchange News

Major exchange OKEx adds 7 new pairs to crypto derivative product; BCH, BSV, EOS, ETC, ETH, LTC, XRP up to 40x leverage: http://bit.ly/2CPsGWY

Regulation News 

China Banking Association, the country’s self-regulatory organization for the banking sector, islaunching a new blockchain-based platform for trade finance. http://bit.ly/2Cb60iL

Indian Police advise locals not to invest in cryptocurrencies: http://bit.ly/2Tsm869

Business News 

Revamped miner strikes Asia through exploiting PCs which are still not patched against the Windows vulnerability: https://zd.net/2TuS0r3

In a first-of-its kind transaction in Singapore, man pays for half of $84,000 car with cryptocurrency ethereum; http://bit.ly/2F7q0FP

Most popular Chinese blockchain chat group fade away in bear market: http://bit.ly/2Tscz7g

KPMG adds four blockchain startups in top China Fintech company index 2018:http://bit.ly/2TrB5Fw

In Case You Missed It

We are offering complimentary tickets to our premium readers to the TRON Summit happening in San Francisco from January 17th-18th with guest speakers including Kobe Bryant, and Justin Sun, CEO of TRON and BitTorrent. Subscribe here or login to get access to your complimentary ticket.