UPDATE (Jan 17): Alibaba clarified on their official Weibo (the Twitter of China) account that the news provided by CnLedger and qq.com is inaccurate and that they will not be providing “mining platforms”.
Along with the recent emergence of cloud mining companies such as Genesis and Hashflare, Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba is finally joining in by launching its very own cryptocurrency mining platform. According to a Tencent report on qq.com – China’s largest multimedia communications company – Alibaba has finally launched its ‘P2P Nodes’ platform a few months after its initial registration at Nanjing back in October 2017.
This news was also relayed by CnLedger, a Twitter-based news information provider in China. According to CnLedger, Alibaba may start incorporating the ‘P2P Nodes’ in their e-commerce platform in the future.
Tencent News: Alibaba launching virtual currency mining platform "P2P Nodes", registered in Nanjing. May incorporate with e-commerce platform in future. (Unconfirmed)https://t.co/w0ZzgKk773
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) January 16, 2018
This news comes as an unexpected but pleasant surprise to the cryptocurrency world after news about China tightening its ban on cryptocurrency trading surfaced on Monday. China has always been one of the least supportive governments when it came to cryptocurrency trading. Just four months ago, the global superpower issued a nationwide clampdown on cryptocurrency exchanges, forcing the majority of traders to transfer their funds over to offshore platforms in order to keep trading.
Thus, Alibaba’s latest decision to dive into the crypto space is directly against the current regulatory narrative coming from Beijing. Local authorities in mainland China have made it clear that Bitcoin mining does not have a place in the country by threatening to enforce power restrictions on huge mining plants like Antpool, BW mining, BTCC, and BTC.com. Regulators in China have also been particularly adamant in shutting down not just regular cryptocurrency exchanges, but also ‘exchange-like services’ as well.
Jack Ma’s Skepticism About Bitcoin
The launch of P2P Nodes is also a direct contradiction with what the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma said in December about cryptocurrencies. In an interview with CNBC, Ma admitted that the world is not yet ready for the prospect of cryptocurrencies.
“I don’t think we are ready for that,” said the Chinese business magnate.
Ma also revealed that Alibaba has been spending “a lot of effort on blockchain technology”; they even formed a team “specifically to study that” and also another team on blockchain technology. Nevertheless, Ma still thinks that Bitcoin is “not for [him]”.
“But Bitcoin, I say not for me. I don’t know.”
Alibaba is not the only company that has shown interest in the booming cryptocurrency market. Just a few days ago, fellow Chinese conglomerate Tencent was reported to have registered the blockchain-related trademark “Ether Lock” and “Ethernet Lock”.
Chinese internet giant Tencent was found to have registered blockchain-related trademark "Ether Lock" https://t.co/fQKn0rHnMq
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) January 16, 2018