Cryptocurrencies in Asia: Singapore & China

Apr 1, 2019 | Asia, BIZ, China, NEWS, Singapore

    South East Asia Desk

Cryptocurrencies are finding a comfortable forever home in Singapore and China

Without a shadow of a doubt, Singapore and China are economic powerhouses – but how are these regions embracing cryptocurrency projects?

China

The Centre for Information and Industry Development or CCID in China have recently released their “thumbs up” for the most promising cryptocurrency projects in the region, and the current ratings reveal that the Chinese are preferring “smart contracts” over the more venerable Bitcoin, which lost its previous rank in CCID’s index.

According to the current rankings, the most preferred cryptocurrency networks are ETH (ethereum), TRX (tron), and EOS. The CCID looked at a total of thirty five different digital assets projects currently operating in China before creating the current rankings based on three criteria. The criteria involve the project’s basic tech, the applicability of the cryptocurrency to current market needs, and creativity.

The most interesting criterion, of course, would be “applicability” of the project in question, which actually translated to the general level of support that the crypto network had in China. Joining the three in China’s top five crypto projects are Nebulas and Ontology. Nebulas is described as “an autonomous metanet, a next generation public blockchain,” while Ontology is a “high-performance public blockchain & a distributed trust collaboration platform.”

Singapore

In Singapore, things are getting hairy and more complicated for crypto exchange companies as the Singapore International Commercial Court or SICC issued its verdict holding crypto exchange company Quoine liable for a computer glitch that allowed crypto liquidity provider B2C2 to exchange 309.2516 ether for 3,092.517116 bitcoin. During the time of the trade, ether traded for $46/1 eth, while bitcoin traded for $1,267/btc.

The story goes that B2C2 executed a trade that pegged 1 ether for 10 bitcoin. B2C2’s trade cost about $14,000, and the amount of bitcoin they got from Quoine amounted to a whopping $3.9 million. Naturally, Quoine detected the glitch and reversed the trade, prompting a very upset B2C2 to file a rather aggressive case against the crypto exchange company, citing Quoine’s own policy that all trades are final and irreversible. SICC’s verdict shocked everyone (except B2C2 perhaps) and Quoine was ordered to pay the liquidity provider damages.

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