The concept of “blockchain” was first coined in late 2008 by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons called Satoshi Nakamoto in a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The first block, or Genesis Block, was created on January 3, 2009, which formed the foundation of the entire Bitcoin trading system and was the prototype of all other blocks in the blockchain. Several years later, particularly in 2017, Bitcoin gained global popularity and people started to realize that it was a good tool for decentralization. In 2018, blockchain became a buzz word but strangely nobody knew the reason. Optimistic predictions such as “two decades later, people will talk about Bitcoin just as they talk about Internet today, and 100% of transactions will be done through blockchain” went viral in the investment field and turned it into an unexpected spree for investors. Some even compared it to the Ninth Wonder of the World, because no any other technology could hold a candle to blockchain in creating possibilities for social reform. Obviously, the capital market didn’t want to remain out of the limelight. In the US stock market, Kodak’s stock price soared 245.16% in 2018 after it announced to issue KodakCoin. China Concepts Stocks, such as Xunlei Limited (XNET), The9 Limited(NCTY), Renren Inc. (RENN), and ChinaNet Online Holdings(CNET), all shot up because these companies involved in blockchain business. In Hong Kong, a tea company witnessed a 23% increase in its stock price after changing its name to “Blockchain Group”. But the leap forward did have a decent reason. According to a roadmap published by McKinsey, the infrastructure for blockchain technology would become mature from 2017 to 2020. Now many large investment banks and tech giants are speeding up their pace in keeping up with the blockchain business. The mainstream view is that the core of blockchain economy is not technology but the reconstruction of the commercial logic. Therefore, it is not only a technology revolution but a recognition revolution. China is embracing the wave of blockchain revolution. Massive Internet users and advanced Internet technology have become the driving force for the rapid development of China’s blockchain industry. In both demand and supply sides, China has great market potential to be tapped. On October 24, 2019, China’s president Xi Jinping stressed that blockchain should be taken as an important link in making breakthrough in the independent innovation of core technology and efforts should be made to accelerate the innovation of blockchain technology and industry. Domestic Internet giants all expanded business to blockchain application, such as Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu, Tencent, and Jingdong. 36 banks, including PBoC and the four major state-owned commercial banks, developed blockchain application and yielded fruitful results. Since from 2008, China has already established a blockchain industry chain covering upstream, midstream and downstream sectors. It is very possible that the “tipping point” of the blockchain industry will be found in China in the near future.
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