According to the founder of Alibaba, digital currencies will help create a new global financial system. Jack Ma also criticized global banking regulation.
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma said digital currencies could play an important role in the new global financial system. The founder of China’s largest tech company, Alibaba, expressed his stance at the Bund Summit in Shanghai.
“Digital currency can create value and we need to think about how to create a new type of financial system with digital currencies,” Ma said.
However, it’s not clear exactly what Ma meant when he talked about digital currencies. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that it was “an amazing speech” in which Ma “talked a lot about cryptocurrency and the future.” However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin asked Zhao what exactly Ma meant by “digital currencies.” To this, Zhao replied that “the meaning can be interpreted in different ways.”
Ma may have been talking about government cryptocurrencies in his speech, such as the digital yuan, which is in the final stages of testing before its official launch. Recently, Governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBC) Yi Gang said that the development of a national digital currency will be one of the main drivers of the PRC’s transition to a digital economy.
Ma also said during his speech that global rules, in particular the Basel Accords – international guidelines for banking regulation – were already outdated. He added that global regulation is holding back China’s development and “does not take into account the possibilities of young people or developing countries.”
Recall that according to a study published in September KISSPatent, Alibaba almost surpassed the American computer giant IBM and by the end of this year will become the largest holder of patents related to the blockchain.