Chinese tech-firms explore web3 partnerships with blockchain innovators | The Crypto Mile Weekly

Chinese tech firms such as Tencent (TCEHY) and Huawei are exploring web3 partnerships with blockchain innovators such as Polygon (MATIC-USD).

This week's The Crypto Mile Weekly Update dissects the current health of the cryptocurrency market.

In recent week's the crypto-market has been buoyed by a wave of new-found enthusiasm for blockchain innovation and digital assets within China, as Beijing shows signs of softening its stance towards this emerging sector.

Read more: Crypto prices surge on China's rate rise halt

The episode also takes a look at the recent disappearance of a cryptocurrency project that was once involved in all-party parliamentary groups at the UK's House of Lords.

Then we check in on new web3 partnerships between Chinese tech-firms and blockchain networks, such as Polygon.

Weekly crypto-market health check

According to data from Coingecko, global cryptocurrency market cap rose at the beginning of the week to $1.14tn, but by week's end had decreased in value to $1.08tn.

On Friday bitcoin (BTC-USD) sank to two-week low after stocks in the crypto-friendly bank, Silvergate Capital crashed by over 50% following the announcement of reviewing books with its auditors.

The bank, which has delayed the filing of its annual report, stated this week that it was uncertain about its "ability to comply with the heightened regulatory scrutiny of banking institutions that provide products and services to the digital asset industry".

In response bitcoin's market cap declined by over $20bn in the last 24 hours, to now stand at $431.9bn, according to Coingecko data. Interest in bitcoin futures was down 8.8% in this morning, according to Coinglass.

Bitcoin has managed to steer above $22,000, now at $22,352, as of the time of writing, down 6.7% in the past week.

Read more: What is conflux? The crypto linked to China's blockchain ambitions

The world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation has failed to reach the recent high of $25,000 on the 21st of February.

The price of ethereum (ETH-USD) has been falling since February the 16th, now at $1565, down 5% in the past week.

Weekly UK crypto news

In UK crypto news, a web3 investment firm with links to two all-party parliamentary groups appears to have suddenly vanished.

There is a history in the web3 space of rug-pulls, where crypto-protocols disappear taking investor funds with them, with zero accountability and zero legal recourse.

Read more: Crypto live prices

According to reports in the Guardian, Phoenix Community Capital, a cryptocurrency investment scheme that was once valued at £665m, appears to have vanished.

The Guardian article claims that the company's website is offline and the investment portfolios that were held on the platform have now become inaccessible to an estimated 8,000 investors.

The co-founder, Luke Sullivan, was a panelist on a conference entitled The Metaverse and Smart Cities, hosted by House of Lords peers in June, 2022.

According to reports, the firm’s assets and have been sold to a new company that has told investors it has no obligation towards them, but that it would still try to make them some returns.

Weekly web3 round-up

Even though China has blocked citizens from buying bitcoin and crypto, citizens are being encouraged to spend, and the increased economic activity is positively affecting a range of China-based web3 and blockchain projects.

There is a perceived softening towards crypto and web3 in Beijing and Hong Kong, with one China-based crypto firm, Conflux (CFX-USD), seeing gains of over 500% in the past week. The enterprise blockchain token has skyrocketed 1,300% since the beginning of 2023.

Conflux announced last week that it was partnering with China Telecom to build blockchain-based SIM cards for mobile phones.

Beijing has recently established a blockchain research division, called the National Blockchain Technology Innovation Centre.

The centre will reportedly focus on developing software and hardware for blockchain-based use cases that benefit the nation's economy.

Huawei Cloud has entered into partnerships with multiple blockchain companies with the launch of Huwei's metaverse and Web3 Alliance project.

#morpheuslabs is now one of key partners in #huawei Metaverse - web3 alliance.

At the same time, #Tencent (biggest game company) announce full force into Web3 with "Metaverse-in-a-box" to #AcceleratingWeb3Success
~~~~~~~~~~

while #morpheuslabs is #SimplfyWeb3Dev https://t.co/d6flnwJHAu pic.twitter.com/pQu7AonXQF

— Pei-Han | Morpheus Labs ⚙️ (@PeiHanChuang) February 23, 2023

The project aims to encourage mass adoption of web3-based innovations in the region of East Asia and beyond.

Polygon is one of the web3 firms that will partner with Huawei Cloud.

However, the layer two scaling solution that runs alongside the Ethereum blockchain has seen its price fall since the crash of Silvergate (SI) stocks began amid a rush of sell-offs throughout the trading day in the US on Thursday.

Polygon fell 3.5% in the past 24 hours, down to $1.17 per token.

Within China, Huawei and Tencent are rapidly expanding their AI and 6G research and development arms in an effort to innovate faster than Western competitors.

At last week's Huawei Cloud Asia-Pacific Partner Leadership Summit in Bali, the company announced it would roll out a 6G network by 2030, despite hiccups in the firm's global 5G's rollout.

Make sure to tune into next week's The Crypto Mile episode where we discuss the recent artificial intelligence developments coming out of China.

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