Asia Express – Cointelegraph Magazine
Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
South Korea invests another $51 million in metaverse technology
South Korea’s plans for metaverse dominance are gaining momentum. A March 8 document prepared by the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the National IT Industry Promotion Agency and the Korea Radio Promotion Association says the three entities will invest a total of 27.7 billion Korean won ($21 million) ) in metaverse projects across 13 sectors such as healthcare, tourism and education. An example of use is about telemedicine in the metaverse:
“Establish a virtual counseling space and provide mental health recovery and promotion services through expert psychological counseling, healing content and community activities.”
On the same day, South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT also announced the creation of a 40 billion Korean won ($30 million) metaverse fund to be run by local investment management companies. It cited the need to incubate domestic metaverse-related companies to become large enough to compete with global companies through expansion of business areas and scale.
Mt. Gox’s deadline for claims
On March 9, trustees of bankrupt Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox that creditors have until April 6, 2023 to complete registration to receive repayment. The largest Bitcoin exchange in the world at the time, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after discovering that 850,000 of the exchange’s Bitcoins had been stolen via discreet hacks and siphoned off over a number of years. The exchange has since recovered around 200,000 BTC. The funds have been held in trust for creditors, with 162,106 BTC ($3.49 billion) in wallet addresses tracked by Token Unlock.
Over the years, the trustees, attorney Nobuaki Kobayashi and the Japanese bankruptcy courts, have repeatedly extended the deadline for registration, likely due to the large number of affected users around the world and the manual processing required for each person involved under such legal procedure.
Everyone seems well and truly fed up with the nine-year bankruptcy process and just wants their money back (or move on to the next case in the court backlog). Kobayashi wrote that anyone who misses the deadline is out of luck:
“Please note that in order to make the repayments to rehabilitation creditors as early as possible, unless there are unavoidable reasons, further extension of the deadline will be difficult.
From one perspective, the enforcement stance could have been a boon to some, as Bitcoin was worth around $580 at the time of the Mt. Gox, but is now worth more than $20K. Many users are likely to see positive “return on investment”, even considering the fact that the payback is only a fraction of the recovery.
Tencent to shut down the NFT app
An in-app message posted on Chinese internet giant Tencent’s NFT platform Huanhe suggests users will have until June 30, 2023 to apply for a refund before the app goes permanently offline. Called “the first digital collectibles app in China”, Huanhe launched in August 2021 and featured both traditional and modern Chinese concept art, video, audio, images and 3D models. However, Tencent stopped all activity on the app on July 1, 2022.
Although the company did not explicitly state its reasons, some users have speculated that NFT sales volumes did not meet expectations. The app also did not offer a secondary market where users could buy and sell collectibles or a feature that allowed users to give their NFTs to others. On Tencent’s official app store, Huanhe has recorded 134,000 downloads since its inception.
The Thai government is sacrificing $1 billion to improve the crypto industry
Thailand’s cabinet has approved a plan to waive corporate tax and value-added tax for companies that issue digital tokens for investment, according to a March 7 Reuters report. The decision encourages companies to raise capital using investment tokens in addition to more traditional methods such as bonds.
The Thai government estimates there will be about 128 billion Thai baht ($3.71 billion) in investment token offerings over the next two years, and the new measures will see it forgo about $1 billion in tax revenue. Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity in Thailand since the Securities Exchange Commission began regulating digital assets. Nevertheless, the country’s central bank and other regulators have banned the use of digital assets as a means of payment.
Canaan’s Bitcoin ASIC Sales Fall
On March 7, the Chinese Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2022. During the last quarter of 2022, Canaan brought in RMB 391.9 million ($56.8 million) in sales, which representing a decrease of 59.9% from the previous quarter. The firm attributed the decline to the ongoing crypto winter.
For the full year, Canaan’s revenue fell from RMB 4,986 million ($715 million) in 2021 to RMB 4,378 million ($635 million) in 2022.
Going forward, the company expects the total installed mining computing power to be around 5 exahash per second (EH/s) by the end of this quarter. In context, the Bitcoin network has a hash rate of around 250 EH/s, currently at an all-time high.
Canaan has also established strategic partnerships with two data center companies, which are expected to provide stable and cost-effective hosting solutions for the company’s expanding mining operations. For the first quarter of this year, Canaan expects total net income to improve slightly to RMB 450 million (US$65 million), but still cites challenging business conditions.
