After issuing stablecoins in Hong Kong, why did JD.com become 'brothers' with the crypto market?

The crypto market is hot, does JD.com want to get a piece of the pie?

On July 24, it was reported by Financial Associated Press that JD Coin Chain Technology (Hong Kong), a subsidiary of JD Technology, will issue a cryptocurrency stablecoin in Hong Kong anchored 1:1 with the Hong Kong dollar, sparking widespread heated discussion in the market.

Due to well-known regulatory reasons, major domestic manufacturers have quickly retreated after getting involved in the encryption field in the early years. Currently, they are mostly focusing on industrial blockchain or indirectly participating in encryption projects as investors. Even after the release of Hong Kong policies, the domestic Internet companies involved in it Large factories are also rare.

JD.com’s move is really surprising.

01. Origin: Hong Kong Stablecoin Issuer Sandbox

Talking about the origin of JD’s stablecoin, we also need to look back at the exploration process of Hong Kong’s stablecoin regulatory policy.

Only from the perspective of stable currency supervision, Hong Kong has a long history. As early as January 22, Hong Kong had begun to pay attention to this key infrastructure linking the traditional finance and encryption fields. At that time, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued a discussion paper on stablecoins, clarifying the preliminary direction of the regulatory framework.

In the sensational declaration of virtual assets in October 22, Hong Kong clearly stated that it would formulate policies to regulate stablecoins. “Stablecoins are another focus for us. Stablecoins also have the potential to compete with traditional financial markets, given their purported ability to maintain value stability and their increasing use, such as as a medium of exchange for cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. Such as payment systems) are interconnected. Drawing on the experience brought by the recent crisis in the virtual asset market (crypto winter), there is an international consensus that governance, stability and redemption mechanisms must be included in the different categories of stablecoins. and other aspects to formulate appropriate supervision.”

Then in December 2023, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority once again issued a consultation document on the proposed regulatory system for stablecoin issuers, starting the second round of public discussion. In March this year, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced a sandbox policy for stablecoin issuers, allowing testing of stablecoin issuance within the regulatory sandbox.

On July 17, the Hong Kong Treasury Bureau and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority jointly issued a consultation summary on the legislative proposals for the implementation of a regulatory system for fiat currency stablecoin issuers in Hong Kong. They conducted a consultation on the corresponding issuer qualifications, reserve management and stabilization mechanisms in stablecoins. explain. If nothing unexpected happens, the next stage will be the Legislative Council's review, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

In nearly 2 years of exploration, the most closely related thing to JD.com is the “Sandbox Policy for Stablecoin Issuers”. To put it in plain language, Hong Kong will select appropriate testers to explore the feasibility of stable currency issuance within a certain regulatory grayscale. On July 18, Hong Kong announced the list of participants in the "sandbox" of five stablecoin issuers, namely JD Coinlink Technology (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. (Coinlink), Yuanbi Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. and Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. Company, Anhui Group Limited, Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited.

After the list was released, BiChain disclosed its stablecoin information on the official website, stating that JD Stablecoin is a stablecoin based on the public chain and linked to the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) 1:1, and will be listed on the public Issued on the blockchain, it was emphasized that each JD stablecoin is redeemable at a 1:1 ratio, and its reserves are composed of highly liquid and credible assets that will be safely stored in separate accounts at licensed financial institutions. , rigorously verify the integrity of reserves through regular disclosures and audit reports. In terms of supervision, JD Stablecoin also stated that it will actively cooperate with global regulatory agencies and comply with existing and evolving legal and regulatory standards.

02. Fermentation: Is it going to end well if big manufacturers enter encryption?

If we only talk about big manufacturers entering the blockchain, it is not surprising. The peak period was around 2015. At that time, under the influence of the wave of foreign blockchains such as Hyperledger and R3, Baidu and Tencent established blockchain R&D teams in 2015, and Alibaba-based Ant Financial established an interest group. Ping An and JD.com came later. In 2016, it announced the establishment of a blockchain research department. Soon afterwards, Tencent Blockchain, Ant Chain, Baidu Super Chain, JD Zhizhen Chain, etc. emerged from the ground and became the strategic cornerstone of the big factory blockchain.

To this day, my country’s major Internet companies also occupy the first echelon of the blockchain industry, covering all categories from infrastructure to product applications and even expanded services. The BaaS platform server is the blockchain development effort of many major manufacturers. critical area. In 2022, the market share of China's blockchain BaaS vendors will be divided among seven units, namely Ant (26.6%), Tencent Cloud (16.3%), Huawei Cloud (11.4%), China Unicom Digits (7.5%), Qulian ( 6.8%), Inspur (6.7%) and Lingshu Technology (5.4%), the seven companies accounted for as much as 80.7%.

But when it comes to the encryption field, big manufacturers tend to avoid it. During the 2018 encryption craze, almost all major manufacturers led by Tencent, Alibaba, and Xunlei participated in encryption projects. At that time, DePin was particularly popular among major manufacturers. However, due to subsequent regulatory reasons, major manufacturers turned around and cut their seats after making a small profit, only making a splash again in the digital collection in 2021. At present, the data storage platforms of most major manufacturers have already announced their withdrawal. In addition to Ant's Whale Detective, which is still operating, JD.com's Lingxi and Baidu's Aixunyu have disappeared. Tencent wisely chose to turn around, shutting down Huanhe and gradually withdrawing from all digital collection businesses of its subsidiaries. .

Today, under strict supervision, major manufacturers’ participation in encryption has become more circuitous. They either secretly set up overseas institutions to divide the business, such as Bilibili’s promotion of NFT overseas, or they complete the layout as investors, such as Tencent’s investment Most of Immutable X and Chainbase have taken a different approach and actively become shovel sellers. Their business focus is on how to promote cloud services and infrastructure in the encryption field, such as Ant Chain's new brand ZAN for Hong Kong and overseas markets.

Back to JD.com itself. Overall, JD.com’s market share in my country’s blockchain market is relatively limited. However, relying on its strong retail advantages, it still has a strong market foundation in the direction of traceability and certificate storage. According to official website data disclosure The number of users exceeds 3 million, and the on-chain data reaches 1.4 billion. Well-known consumer brands such as Wyeth, Yili, and Nestlé are all its blockchain customers. However, in the field of encryption, JD.com is relatively conservative and has few involvements. In search engines, JD.com and crypto businesses have little relevance.

03. Idea: Aiming at the most profitable payment business

Because of this, the currency chain announced the release of stablecoins under the name of JD.com, which undoubtedly aroused heated discussion in the market. Is the entry of big factories a prophet of spring water heating ducks?

This issue still needs to be studied in depth, but if you take a closer look at JD Coin Chain, its determination to target the payment business can be seen.

Judging from the time of establishment, the company has just been established and was only officially registered in March this year. Its main business covers digital currency payment systems and blockchain infrastructure. The current CEO is Liu Peng, Vice President of JD Technology.

Although it was established less than 5 months ago, the enterprise license is quite sound. According to Hong Kong SFC information disclosure, JD Coin Chain Technology has obtained the No. 1 and No. 4 securities trading licenses and the No. 9 asset management license. From the perspective of licenses, Bichain has not submitted applications for No. 7 license and VASP, which are the core of the virtual asset business, indicating that there is no plan to enter virtual asset transactions. However, the coverage of the payment business license still reflects clear business clarity. Of course, , and does not rule out the possibility of getting involved in encryption platforms in the future.

Looking at the current CEO, he calls himself "WeChat Pay Lianchuang" on LinkedIn, and mentions his 8 years of experience in WeChat Pay, saying that as the co-founder and product director of WeChat Pay, he created WeChat Pay products from scratch. , and as a core product staff created the phenomenal product WeChat Red Envelope. In 2018, he joined Huawei as head of global mobile payment product operations and director of the aggregation operations department.

Until May 22, Liu Peng entered JD.com and successively served as the vice president of JD Logistics Group. In 2023, he began to be responsible for overseas financial technology business, and founded JD Coin Chain this year. Overall, No. 1 has quite a lot of payment experience.

It can be seen that the company was founded with the goal of digital currency payment. As for why it chose stablecoins as the entry point instead of a more direct encryption trading platform, the answer is quite simple - the money-making effect.

The most direct manifestation of the encryption business in Hong Kong is the virtual asset exchange, and this area is obviously not optimistic for the time being. Due to strict compliance and supervision, coupled with the small local market, even with a relatively impressive user conversion rate, the number of users is very limited. Hong Kong's local virtual asset exchanges are inevitably faced with profitability and survival difficulties. The local exchange Hashkey only achieved positive monthly cash flow for the first time in January this year since it was licensed, and OSL was previously sold to Bitget by BC Group, reflecting the difficulty of operating the current situation.

In terms of ETFs, the income of issuers can also be seen with the naked eye. The total transaction volume of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in the two months since they were launched is only less than 30 million US dollars. The data can only be called unsatisfactory. For comparison, the US Ethereum spot ETF has been launched. Trading volume exceeded US$1 billion on the first day.

But as a payment market for stablecoins, the situation is quite different. Data shows that the quarterly transfer volume of stablecoins has increased seventeen times in the past four years, reaching US$4 trillion in the second quarter of this year. On July 17, 2024, the total trading volume of the entire cryptocurrency market was US$94.8 billion, and stablecoins accounted for 91.7% of the market trading volume, reaching US$87 billion. The market is huge.

USDTを例に挙げると、同社は限界費用をほぼゼロで発行することで、リスクのない金利と投資利益を得ているだけで、2023年に得られる純利益は62億にも上ります。米ドルと会社の総従業員数 わずか 100 名で、お金を稼ぐスピードは紙幣印刷機と言えます。

さらに、ビジネスラインが明確かつシンプルであるため、プラットフォーム側で関与する証券ビジネスほど業務は複雑ではありません。言い換えれば、規制コストはより制御可能であり、一貫性があります。そうした中で、デジタル通貨決済事業者として、最も収益性が高く参入しやすいステーブルコイン事業を狙うのは当然のことだ。

04. 現状: 現実的な困難という制約の下で試してみる価値はある

現状から判断すると、JDコインチェーンも明らかに模倣し、インフラ決済に重点を置き、先行者規模のメリットを獲得し、その規模を拡大するつもりである。仕事。しかし、アイデアは良いものの、実際に実行するのは難しいものでもあります。

近年、そのリッチなケーキに惹かれて多くの有名機関がステーブルコイン分野に参入しましたが、そのほとんどは失敗しました。その主な理由は、ステーブルコイン市場では、3大ステーブルコインが市場シェアの90％を占め、特にUSDTが時価総額160ドルの中でほぼ独占的な存在となっていることにある。 USDTには1100億元以上があります。世界的に有名な決済大手Paypalを例に挙げると、同社は決済ユーザーとブランド認知度の点でトップクラスに位置しているが、昨年8月に発行したステーブルコインPYUSDは発行総額わずか3億4,900万米ドルにとどまっている。しかし、ステーブルコイン分野ではすでに第7位に入っています。

JD.comにとって、環境はさらに悪いです。米ドルのステーブルコイン市場の集中の暗黙の結果は、他の法定通貨のステーブルコインの市場が制限されるということですが、香港の仮想通貨市場の規模と比較すると、香港ドルのステーブルコインがその市場規模を突破できるかどうかはまだわかりません。包囲網や現地の規制も、この分野での JD.com の発展を妨げるでしょう。

現地の規制要件の観点から見ると、香港には発行者に対する規制が比較的明確であり、コンプライアンスコストが高いことは明らかです。発行者の資格に関して、財務局は、認可された法定通貨ステーブルコインの発行者、銀行、認可された法人、認可された仮想資産取引プラットフォームのみが香港で法定通貨ステーブルコインを販売したり、香港国民に法定通貨ステーブルコインを積極的に販売したりできることを求めている。関連サービスを促進するために、財務局は既存のステーブルコイン発行者向けに移行措置を設けました。

準備金に関して、香港金融管理局は発行者に対して、法定通貨ステーブルコインが高品質で流動性の高い準備資産の100%に裏付けられていることを保証することを要求しています。同時に、発行者の最低払込株式資本は次のとおりである必要があります。流通している法定ステーブルコインの総額の少なくとも 2%、または 2,500 万香港ドルのいずれか高い方。ステーブルコインによる伝統的な金融システムへの被害を抑えるため、香港のステーブルコイン発行会社はユーザーへの利払いも禁止する。

香港は、USDTやUSDCなどの主流のステーブルコインの市場参入に直接拒否権を発動していないが、それらが香港の規制要件を通過できるかどうかを強調し、各機関は香港に事業体を設立し、ライセンスの承認を得る必要があると強調した。香港がステーブルコインを申請する銀行機関を排除していないことは注目に値する。

これは間違いなく、たとえ発行者の資格を取得することが困難であっても、直面する必要がある競争圧力が増大する可能性があることを意味します。短期的な現実的な考慮から見ても、ステーブルコインには依然として多くの問題があり、発行基準は高く、ステーブルコインを運用するための直接支払いシステムやストアドバリュー方式がなく、会計レベルでは企業資産の決定が明確ではありません。

しかし、いずれにせよ、現在の決済システムが直面している適時性と単一性を考慮すると、特に仮想資産の世界的なセンターになることを望んでいる地域である香港にとって、法定通貨のトークン化のための市場スペースは必ず存在します。 、ステーブルコインは不可欠な基盤であり、おそらくこれが大手メーカーが積極的に関与する重要な理由の1つです。

蚊の肉も肉であり、JD.com は明らかにこの肉を必要としています。結局のところ、トロイカの中核である電子商取引事業の成長はボトルネックに直面しており、物流は最適化期にあり、中国の新たな成長ポイントの模索が続いています。デジタル金融は特に重要です。香港の政策開放後、仮想資産市場の膨大なトラフィックは、それが水域を試すためであろうと、開発を求めるためであろうと、簡単に手の届く利益点になりました。JDコインチェーンを設立するのには十分な理由があります。ステーブルコインの応用シナリオは、B サイドと C サイドにまたがり、従来の金融市場と仮想通貨市場も含まれます。言うまでもなく、仮想通貨の国境を越えた支払いは JD.com 自身の電子商取引小売ビジネスと非常に親和性が高く、最終的にはそのようなものになりました。 JD.com の暗号通貨への主要な入り口。

全体として、JD.com の関与は依然として暗号化業界に前向きなシグナルを送っており、将来さらに多くの大手メーカーが参加するようになるかどうかに注目する価値があります。しかしその一方で、規制によれば、サンドボックスパイロットに参加したとはいえ、これは小規模なテストにすぎず、JD Coin Chainがステーブルコインを発行する資格があることを意味するものではないことを強調する必要があります。現在、通貨チェーンは香港やその他の管轄区域でステーブルコインを発行しておらず、サンドボックス参加者は初期段階で公的資金を使用することはありません。投資家も注意を払う必要があります。

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