From Huaqiangbei to the test field, what path will Shenzhen mining machines take?

On August 18, the "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Supporting Shenzhen in Building a Demonstration Zone of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" was officially released. The "Opinions" mentioned "supporting the development of innovative applications such as digital currency research and mobile payments in Shenzhen." This is the final decision made by the Chinese Central Committee and the State Council after five years of research and development, and it is also something that the entire blockchain industry and the Shenzhen blockchain industry should be happy about.

However, many people have also raised a question about this, just like many people are confused about Shanghai becoming a pilot city for "garbage classification", why did the central government choose Shenzhen as the test field for "digital currency"?

Let’s take a look at Shenzhen’s blockchain ecosystem.

Huaqiangbei mining machine

It all started from Huaqiangbei.

Shenzhen, one of the four first-tier cities in my country, is located in the southern part of Guangdong, with Hong Kong in the south and Guangzhou in the north. Since it was listed as a special economic zone in 1980, Shenzhen has developed rapidly and created the world-renowned "Shenzhen speed". Shenzhen occupies an important position in China's high-tech industries, financial services, foreign trade exports and other aspects. It is no exaggeration to call this city "finance on the left hand and technology on the right hand". As an electronic product, Huaqiangbei is the forefront of Shenzhen's technology. New technologies of all sizes will be reflected through Huaqiangbei's electronic products.

In 2017, when you walk into Shenzhen Huaqiangbei, you will find that the people passing by you are no longer talking about family matters, whether a certain brand of computer is better in some aspects, or whether a certain iPhone is better, but hash values, mining machines, and blockchain. These concepts may confuse ordinary pedestrians, but for the sales clerks at the one-meter counter, these concepts are very familiar to them. Even though they don’t know foreign languages, they can already skillfully take out calculators to mark the prices of mining machines for customers from all over the world.

Since 2013, Shenzhen has transformed itself and rapidly grown into a global blockchain hardware distribution center. As the largest gathering place for electronic products in China, Huaqiangbei has become the frontier of blockchain hardware. More than 70% of the world's Bitcoin mining machines come from Huaqiangbei. With the continuous increase in the price of Bitcoin, the sale of mining machines has even become an industry that makes more money than mining. Bitmain, Canaan Creative and Ebang Technology, three mining machines with sales volume accounting for 90% of the world's "Made in China" products, began to take root in Shenzhen. And this sign of mining machine sales became the initial appearance of Shenzhen's blockchain.

The existence of mining machines has also spawned a new profession of miners. Fang Xuchu, the founder of Hpool mining pool in Shenzhen, is a miner. In order to mine, he rented a house in Longyan, Fujian, and filled the house with graphics cards. When he built Yibit, he continued to improve the mining ecosystem and finally started to build mining machines himself. In order to prevent the PoW (Proof of work) workload proof mechanism from isolating ordinary people from participating, he began to promote the PoC hard disk mining mechanism. In this way, Brother Chong gradually went from a second-hand computer seller to a big boss in the currency circle, and now he is known as the PoC consensus mechanism evangelist.

Similar to Brother Chong’s experience, the small seed from Huaqiangbei grew into a towering tree in just a few years.

Are all Shenzhen blockchain projects “Ponzi schemes”?

After the blockchain industry in Shenzhen started to flourish, projects started to emerge one after another, and bigwigs emerged one after another, which brought a lot of vitality to the industry. The well-known financial blogger "Super Bitcoin" published a topic on Weibo about the second-tier exchanges overtaking on the curve. He said: "Currently, most second-tier exchanges have turned their attention to the south - Shenzhen, not for anything else, but because Shenzhen has the most "projects" and has supported multiple exchanges this year."

In the eyes of many people, Shenzhen blockchain projects are no different from Ponzi schemes, which use bubbles like cryptocurrency to build up into high-rise buildings, and then donate money and run away when the time is right. Among the many projects that are mixed with good and bad ones, there are always some gray projects. For example, the "Bit King" project. The project company named "Shenzhen Lion Software Co., Ltd." uses several unidentified guidance communities to attract traffic, and the "Bit King Exchange" is responsible for mass production of white papers and air projects to attract uninformed users to buy and invest. With the combination of the two, the "Bit King" project easily gathered hundreds of millions of funds in a short period of time.

Zhang Yiyun of Jidou Capital has a different understanding of Shenzhen's CX style. He believes that the "CX" fund is no longer a "pyramid scheme" as previously thought, but a long-term, innovative, sustainable, and honest one. In Shenzhen, there are several large-scale "CX" conferences every month, attracting many "little leeks" to attend. The author has participated in offline blockchain sharing and exchange meetings in many places. The atmosphere in Shenzhen is indeed different. Shenzhen is the only one that can fill the venue even with a high temperature of nearly 40 degrees at noon.

Even in the voting for the first stop of the IOST National Tour offline meetup, Shenzhen was far ahead of other cities with 636 votes. Beijing received 46 votes, Shanghai 58 votes, and Guangzhou only 68 votes.

Shenzhen is not short of "quality".

The operation department of the public chain Cocos-BCX is located in Shenzhen. Their positioning is "the next generation of digital economic platform for games". Cocos-BCX wants to organically combine developers, players and communities to create a complete chain game ecosystem. Not long ago, the COCOS token was successfully launched on the Binance exchange. It is worth mentioning that the listing fee of COCOS is 0, which proves that Cocos-BCX is of high quality.

Newdex is a very high-quality exchange that has been contributing to the industry. Newdex, which is busy "fighting" with CEX, has always been the "pioneer" in the DEX field. As the first exchange on the EOS network, Newdex has become the DEX with the largest daily activity and daily transaction volume on the EOS chain. However, for the entire blockchain industry, the concept of "decentralized exchange" is not yet mature and is still in its infancy. Newdex still has a long way to go.

It is worth mentioning that the city government's policies and economic support have played a very critical role in the development of Shenzhen's blockchain. Since 2016, Shenzhen has issued documents such as the "13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Shenzhen's Financial Industry", the "Guidelines for Application for the 2017 Support Plan for Shenzhen's Major Science and Technology Industry Special Project", "Several Measures for Shenzhen's Support for the Development of the Financial Industry", and the "Notice of the Municipal Economic and Trade Information Committee on the Organization and Implementation of the Second Batch of Support Plans for the 2018 Special Project on Information Security of the New Generation of Information Technology for Strategic Emerging Industries in Shenzhen" to support and reward the development of blockchain in Shenzhen.

The rise and development of an industry is often inseparable from policy support. In the past few years of blockchain development, the Shenzhen government has repeatedly provided policy and real money support to industry professionals, which is why Shenzhen has become the city with the most registered blockchain companies in the country. According to Tianyancha information, as of August 28, 2019, there were 4,360 blockchain companies in Shenzhen. These companies form the trunk and branches of Shenzhen's blockchain, building a complete industrial ecosystem in Shenzhen.

Once you come to Shenzhen, you are a Shenzhener

On August 18, 2019, the full text of the "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Supporting Shenzhen in Building a Pilot Demonstration Zone of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" was released. Article 5, "Accelerating the Construction of a Modern Industrial System," clearly stated that it supports the development of innovative applications such as digital currency research and mobile payments in Shenzhen. In Yu Bo's writing, Uncle Cat almost couldn't believe it when he heard the news. He opened the full text of the Chinese government's opinions online and read it from beginning to end no less than ten times, and he still couldn't calm down for a long time.

Yu Bo mentioned in the article that "Shenzhen has many APP projects that are on the right track and have a large number of users. These high-quality projects are one of the main forces that Shenzhen's digital currency mobile payment pilot demonstration zone relies on to lead the world. However, these projects are different from "air coins" and "pyramid schemes". They must be explicitly encouraged and detailed by the government before they dare to officially announce their digital currency business, and then apply for digital currency licenses or enter the digital currency park."

Obviously, "Shenzhen has become a digital currency test field" has opened the door for many high-quality projects. In the future, there will definitely be more high-quality projects emerging, because in the Shenzhen blockchain industry, there is never a shortage of people who work hard.

BlockGo founder Chao Chaojun is such a big shot. I first met Chao Chaojun at a sharing session in Shenzhen. Before he came into contact with EOS, he was a Bitcoin evangelist. After 2017, he began to participate in the EOS community and node construction, and also made a lot of efforts in the promotion of EOS. He is a very Buddhist big shot. In his eyes, the amount of his Bitcoin can no longer be increased by an order of magnitude. There is no need to compete for or care about the price of Bitcoin. Just do things down to earth.

Chao Chaojun believes that the concept of Defi is more like "nonsense" and that the public chain is the future of blockchain. He is consistent in his words and deeds and devotes his energy to the public chain EOS that he is optimistic about. The reason why he is optimistic about the EOS public chain is that EOS is doing things in a down-to-earth manner.

Shenzhen's blockchain industry has become so vibrant today thanks to policies, the hard work of bigwigs, and the efforts of countless practitioners. That's why bigwigs like Bo He and Liu Ming have all expressed their hope to develop in Shenzhen through their Moments.

For this purpose, the author specially contacted the boss of Mint and talked about things in Shenzhen.

"Shenzhen has a good climate!" Bohe joked. "Shenzhen has recently implemented a series of policies, and there is also information that the central bank's digital currency will be piloted in Shenzhen. After the Hong Kong incident, it is basically certain that Shenzhen will be the key financial center for future development." Bohe then compared Shenzhen with other first-tier cities: "I think (Shenzhen) is more inclusive. Shenzhen's software industry base has some solid technology companies. I don't have a deep understanding of Shanghai. Beijing is more financial in nature. Maybe I will say it in advance. As for how it performs, it depends on the team. Relatively speaking, I am more optimistic about the future development of Shenzhen. It is very likely to replace Hong Kong and become the future financial center."

Indeed, compared with Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, Shenzhen, which focuses on technology and finance, is more suitable for the development of blockchain. Those "down-to-earth" people in Shenzhen have indeed grasped the historical trend and played out the value of blockchain! For this reason, the central government chose Shenzhen, where the blockchain atmosphere is strong, as a test field for digital currency, and entrusted the important task of RMB internationalization to Shenzhen!

Come on, Shenzhen!