• A major Chinese bank, the China Merchants Bank, has invested in BitPie, the Bitcoin wallet provider.
• Furthermore, a committee of the Chinese province Sichuan explained that Bitcoin mining in the region should be further promoted. 

According to CNF reports, the committee of the 13th National People’s Congress in China has passed a “Cryptography Law” which will come into force on 1 January next year. In addition, China’s President Jinping Xi described the blockchain as an essential future technology. As a result, a historic pump on the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency market occurred last Friday. The news news from China, however, are continuing. Apparently the announcement was prepared for the long haul.

China Merchants Bank invests in Bitcoin wallet provider BitPie

Only days after this announcement it was revealed that a major Chinese bank has made an investment in the oldest Bitcoin wallet in China called BitPie. As Dovey Wan, co-founder of PrimitiveCrypto, explained via Twitter, China Merchants Bank has invested in BitPie, a non-custodian Bitcoin wallet. According to Wan, this is the longest and most used Bitcoin wallet in China. She also said in a tweet that, in her view, this marks the beginning of the nationalisation of Bitcoin and crypto-related infrastructure:

All I can say is this to me it’s a sign of begining of the nationalization of Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency related infra in mainland Eventually, all things can be state-owned, or at least partially (mining, ASIC, exchanges, wallets, etc etc).

Dovey Wan also explained that what many Bitcoin investors have probably already thought. Unlike Bakkt or a Bitcoin ETF, China has once again managed to massively influence the cryptocurrency market. Arthur Hayes, CEO of BitMEX, also pointed out the great influence of China that the country already had on Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market from 2013 to 2017, before it banned the operation of cryptocurrency exchanges and the launch of Initial Coin Offerings. Hayes pointed out that China could regain its influence.

China’s Sichuan province to promote Bitcoin Mining

Another news, first reported by Coindesk, says that the chairman of Sichuan province in China, one of the most important Bitcoin mining areas in the world, should investigate how the area can remain attractive to the mining industry.

As the Sichuan Daily reported today, Yang Jiang, former vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and member of the China People’s Political Consultative Conference, a central-level advisory body for political legislation, said Sichuan should create more business opportunities in the region based on Bitcoin and blockchain technology.

Jiang’s statement does not represent the opinion of politics in Beijing. However, the statement comes only a few days after the statements of China’s President Jinping Xi. This also confirms the opinion shared by Dovey Wan that China is not only interested in the blockchain technology but also Bitcoin.

Is China only interested in the blockchain?

Over the past two years, China has pursued a very strict policy towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. Many commentators and reporters in the crypto sphere therefore report that China has an exclusive interest in blockchain technology but not in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

This approach seems logical at first, since China is a central state that will have no interest in decentralized technologies. Furthermore, China enforced the closure of local cryptocurrency exchanges and introduced a ban for ICOs in 2017.

The latest news from China, however, confirms that these statements are not completely correct. Dovey Wan also reported that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is currently distributing educational material about the blockchain. The material also features both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) content.

While it is unlikely that China’s government intends to establish any competition with its own digital currency, which is due to be launched next year, the political opinion about Bitcoin seems to have changed significantly.