China becomes world leader in blockchain use

Last week, a small delegation of Australian blockchain companies visited Shanghai as part of a government-backed trade mission to strengthen ties between the countries in the industry.

On Monday, the delegation visited the headquarters of the Chinese company Ant Financial, operator of the world's largest mobile payment platform Alipay, which has about 520 million users. In June, the company raised a record $14 billion to develop blockchain technology. Also in June, payments giant Alibaba launched a real-time funds transfer service using blockchain technology in the Philippines. The company plans to expand the service to other remittance corridors around the world, including business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.

China leads the world in the number of blockchain patents obtained by local firms, according to Thomson Reuters research. For example, Alibaba accounts for 10 percent of all blockchain patents in the world. Second place goes to IBM.

China also understands that Australia has an important role to play in strengthening global blockchain standards, after the country was appointed by the International Organization for Standardization to head a committee of 35 ISO member countries. In March 2017, the Australian standards body unveiled a one-world approach to distributed ledgers.

While countries share the same views on blockchain technology, countries have very different approaches to cryptocurrencies. In 2017, China largely banned domestic cryptocurrency trading and ICO, and Australia developed Regulation for the cryptocurrency sector, requiring operators to register and comply with financial monitoring agency requirements.

According to ccn.com