Bitcoin is “Property” Under Chinese Law
Boom, Bitcoin (BTC) has just seen a watershed moment in China. Despite the fact that the nation’s regulators turned on cryptocurrency, enforcing heavy regulations about digital asset trading, events, and certain forums/social media accounts, a court in China purportedly confirmed that BTC is legally protected as a form of “digital property”.
Per a thread from Dovey Wan, a partner at Primitive, a crypto-friendly fund, the Hangzhou Internet Court confirmed that Bitcoin can be defined as “property” under local law. In fact, a statement from the court’s judges noted that they see BTC as an asset that is not only valuable and disposable — the tenets of property — but scarce too.
Per Wan’s analysis of the situation, which weighs on comments from locals and her thoughts on China’s stance on cryptocurrency, this is entirely bullish.
In fact, she notes that this ruling disperses the cloud of “holding Bitcoin is illegal you [filtered for profanity] criminal,” which became somewhat of a trend in mainland China after the People’s Bank of China openly lambasted cryptocurrencies, especially in regards to hacks and scams. (A relevant aside, the Chinese central bank recently revealed that it is looking to launch a digital Yuan, should Facebook Libra succeed or should the U.S. Dollar begin to encroach further on the Yuan.)
And, she adds that the fact that the leading proposed catalyst about Bitcoin’s sharp rally past $10,000 from the Chinese is this court ruling, which, in her eyes, makes the deeming of BTC as a form of “digital property” a “big milestone.”
Libra, and Crypto Too, on the Rise in China
This key court case comes hot on the heels of news that Libra, and the broader cryptocurrency trend for that matter, are back on the rise in China.
Per previous reports from this very outlet, data from Google Trends suggests that “Facebook Libra” is on a popular search term in China. Case in point, on Weibo earlier this week, Libra had become the second-largest trending topic on Weibo. In fact, the topic had seen over 220 million views and tens of thousands of comments.
According to Wan, this trend is easily explainable. She writes that this “attention bomb” in China was set off due to David Marcus’ mention of Alipay and WeChat Pay, the nation’s two foremost digital payment ecosystems.
During Wednesday’s hearing, the head of Blockchain at Facebook noted that should Libra come to market, it will likely compete with the two Chinese payment services.
In related news, WeChat keyword analytics have registered a massive uptick in the volume of “Bitcoin”. In fact, the past ninety days have seen keyword volume for the Chinese term for “Bitcoin” skyrocket by five times.
Photo by Miranda Richey on Unsplash
