Despite Bans and Strict Regulations, Crypto Innovators See a ‘Bright Future’ in China

Neither bans nor crashes nor draconian rules can stay some Chinese crypto pros from doing their thing, the Coin Telegraph reports:

While China has spent the past year implementing a series of prohibiting regulations that have made it almost impossible for the cryptocurrency industry to thrive within the country, Chinese crypto enthusiasts have not let government regulation prevent them from moving forward with crypto and Blockchain innovation.

…there are some Chinese innovators that see a future in the country’s crypto and Blockchain markets, regardless or in spite of current limitations for operating there. These entrepreneurs are doing their best to develop their crypto and Blockchain projects specifically with a Chinese audience in mind.

One such entrepreneur is Xiahong Lin, founder of Blockchain prediction market platform Bodhi. Bodhi is a decentralized prediction market where users can bet on anything, from election results or company sales to sports and commodities and even the weather.

Lin specifically built Bodhi for the Chinese, developing it on Qtum rather than the more global Ethereum platform, and is making it compliant with Beijing’s regulations – despite being based in San Francisco:

There will be huge growth, a promising future if you build something especially for China. So that’s a trend that I see. Actually, you can tell now by where we are in 2018 that China is a really huge market. It participates in a lot of projects and investments. I think this is just a beginning and it will have a lot of future.

Lin is apparently so focused on being Beijing-compliant that he even returned the pre-ICO funds he received last year. With the company based in SF and having a coalition headquartered in Singapore, Bodhi is arguably exempt from the ban. Rather than having the funds ruin his dream of working in the Middle Kingdom however, he chose to return them. Here’s what he told the Coin Telegraph:

“…we consulted with a lot of our lawyers. They said you are fine to keep those [pre-ICO] funds, because it was before the regulation and you are out of China.

But eventually I decided to refund everything because I don’t want to change my vision [of working in China].

Again, we are a startup, we are not doing a meaningless project to just simply open something and hope that somebody will use it. I want to be fully compliant with China’s regulations because we are targeting China, and China’s markets. So we decided to fully refund it.”

That right there is a true believer.

Photo: Jim Winstead