China’s central government recently announced that it had drafted regulation which would require blockchain users to register with their government IDs, stripping blockchain users of their anonymity. Please find below some reactive commentary from industry leaders on the decision.
Fran Strajnar, CEO and Co-founder of Brave New Coin, a leading data and research company focused on the Blockchain and Cryptographic Assets industry said:
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“Due to the broad language used in this draft policy, anything remotely ‘blockchain’ is essentially subject to compliance considerations, not just cryptocurrencies and tokens.
It’s interesting that this came from Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). It may be portentous of things to come, as the CAC is in-charge of the social-credit scoring system. The PBOC will undoubtedly release it’s own centralized cryptocurrency (a “Digital Yuan” ) and combine it with their social scoring system. The future is going to be decentralized unstoppable technology vs ever increasingly censored solutions.”
Jake Choi, CMO at Fantom, the world’s first DAG based smart contract platform said:
“Privacy is and always has been one of the greatest values of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, and the vast array of cryptocurrencies in the market today, were created to provide users with a decentralized monetary framework that enables users to make transactions while maintaining their privacy and shifting the power away from central authorities. China’s new regulation strips people of their right to anonymity and as industry professionals, it’s our duty to help users reclaim their privacy while still raising standards around security and user-friendliness. To do so, we can start by creating better methods of KYC.”
Rafael Delfin, Head of Research of Brave New Coin, a leading data and research company focused on the Blockchain and Cryptographic Assets industry said:
“It is unfortunate to learn of China’s increasing grip on distributed ledger technology. Technically, a country cannot strip privacy technology from a blockchain protocol but they can control the access points, such as exchanges, to crypto assets, which is what this latest Chinese regulation is proposing. Hopefully the community will keep finding ways to circumvent such measures. While we applaud the Chinese’s governments efforts to prevent consumer abuse, this type of privacy restricting regulations pose a threat to any Chinese activist and citizen that is critical to their government.”
This article was originally published in ValueWalk.
Photo: Jonathan Kos-Read