The blockchain industry has invested over 1 billion US dollars. Will domestic giants BAT be absent?

Since 2015, the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin has become increasingly popular. According to the 2014-2016 Global Bitcoin Development Report released by Huobi.com, China's largest Bitcoin trading platform, Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance Internet Finance Laboratory, and Sina Technology, as of today, the total investment in the blockchain industry has exceeded US$1 billion. Various blockchain start-ups are trying to expand their territory and gain a foothold in new areas.

At the same time, we continue to hear well-known names joining the competition:

1. Microsoft opens its Azure cloud computing platform to the blockchain sector;

2. IBM and Samsung collaborate to create ADEPT IoT solution based on blockchain technology;

3. The initial members of the open source blockchain project Hyperledger led by the Linux Foundation include 11 giants in various fields, including Accenture, Fujitsu, Intel, and JPMorgan Chase;

4. The R3 Alliance, which focuses on interbank settlement, has gathered dozens of the world's top banks to participate...

Wait, why are all the companies here foreigners? Where are our leading Chinese companies? Don’t they see the disruptive potential of blockchain?

Don’t worry, today I will take the famous BAT as an example to sort out the actions of China’s top companies in the blockchain field.

B: I have been looking for it for a long time

In fact, Baidu's nose is more sensitive than many of the foreign companies listed above. As early as 2013, Baidu's cloud service provider Accelerator announced support for Bitcoin payments. Baidu said that Accelerator users can use Bitcoin to purchase all paid services of Accelerator, and will continue to make more new attempts in the future to bring more and more convenient payment methods. However, on December 5, 2013, the People's Bank of China and five other ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks", which stipulates that at this stage, financial institutions and payment institutions shall not use Bitcoin to price products or services. And then, what happened next.

However, is Baidu just going to stop there?

In June 2016, blockchain payment company Circle received $60 million in Series D funding, led by IDG Capital in Beijing, China. Baidu was listed in a series of strategic investment lists, and Circle and Baidu reached a new strategic partnership.

It turns out that Baidu is true love and has never given up.

A: Be careful when testing Arirang

Anyone who has studied blockchain technology knows that blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the entire payment system. Alipay, owned by Alibaba, is the undisputed leader in China's payment field. Facing this potential revolutionary, has Alibaba taken any action on blockchain?

I haven’t seen any news about it, as if Alibaba hasn’t noticed blockchain yet.

Until recently, on July 9, 2016.

At the "Internet Charity" forum of the first Global XIN Charity Conference held in Hangzhou, Ant Financial mentioned in its speech that blockchain technology will soon be launched and will be first applied to Alipay's charity donation platform. Ant Financial said: "On the Alipay charity donation platform, users often donate from a few yuan to hundreds of yuan, and the donations cannot be tracked after entering the charity project account." "Blockchain technology should be applied to the Alipay charity donation platform, so that the life cycle of each payment is recorded on the blockchain, and users can continue to trace it."

It turns out that Alibaba has not been idle, and the first thing it has taken action on is a project that is about to be implemented.

It has to be said that Alibaba's choice of blockchain as a test drive is a good one. We know that after the Guo Meimei incident, people's distrust of traditional charity organizations has become increasingly serious. The development of charity must rebuild people's trust, and blockchain, a "trust-making machine" (as The Economist puts it), happens to be able to undertake this task. At the same time, choosing a relatively marginal charity business to start with also shows Alibaba's cautious attitude towards experimentation.

[The editor would like to say something to Jack Ma. Your Alipay and Taobao are both hot spots in the blockchain revolution. Startups using blockchain for payment are springing up like mushrooms after a rain. The decentralized "Taobao" OpenBazzar using Bitcoin has been released and is being rapidly iterated. Standing at the forefront of development and change, the editor believes that Alibaba can "learn from the barbarians to defeat them"! ]

T: The Emperor Penguin

Compared with Baidu and Alibaba, Tencent seems to pay less attention to blockchain technology. We only know that on May 31, 2016, the Financial Blockchain Cooperation Alliance was established in Shenzhen. Tencent and its subsidiary WeBank joined as member units and initiators respectively. As for whether Pony Ma secretly studied the black technology of blockchain, the editor does not know.

However, it is worth noting that in this financial blockchain alliance, there are also some other large Chinese companies, such as Huawei (my market value is twice the sum of BAT, so I put it here, editor, come over and let’s talk), and JD Finance.

It turns out that everyone is like ducks floating on the water, calm on the surface but scrambling for position underwater.

In addition to BAT, we also noticed that Ping An of China officially joined the international blockchain financial industry alliance R3, Luyitong acquired the Bitcoin mining chip company Canaan Creative for 3 billion, and Credit China invested 30 million US dollars in the Bitcoin mining company BitFury... Chinese companies are constantly making explosive large-scale operations in the blockchain field. Chinese companies have seen the great era of blockchain.

We have reason to believe that the Chinese will never miss this train heading towards the future!