Could China’s stance on cryptocurrency be a watershed moment? Recent move by giant Tencent Cloud strongly suggests this. Tencent Cloud’s team will make an unexpected investment in web3-related products, putting the Chinese tech company among the ranks of large global IT corporations that have made substantial strides in web3, such as Google and Amazon.
The new Web3 investment from the IT conglomerate will also include a new set of crypto-native partnerships.
There is new cryptocurrency excitement in the East.
Long-term cryptocurrency analysts are no strangers to the ‘China narrative,’ which has previously influenced short-term market movement. ‘China forbids Bitcoin’ became a cliche in the early days of cryptocurrencies, but could the tide be turning? Only this week, our team highlighted the potential shift in sentiment among Chinese authorities and Hong Kong’s efforts to allow direct investment in digital assets – a move that Beijing officials appear to have approved of thus far.
From a traditional standpoint, it’s been a pretty unexpected shift in the tides; in the west, the United States is signaling stronger regulatory activities surrounding cryptocurrency. “Local digital currency industry operators [in China]… fear that Beijing aims to use Hong Kong as a backdoor to access crypto operations,” we wrote this week.
This story will be strengthened by Tencent Cloud’s recent statement this week. Tencent Cloud announced a new suite of crypto-native partners and a new slate of Web3-based activities in a press release issued on Wednesday. These initiatives include blockchain-based APIs, ‘metaverse-in-a-box’ services, and others. The announcement follows the company’s inaugural Web3 summit, the Tencent Cloud Web3 Development Day in Singapore.
Tencent Cloud Latest Crypto-Native Collaborations
Tencent Cloud will collaborate with a select set of crypto characters, including Ankr, Avalanche, Scroll, and Sui, to achieve their goals. But first, let’s take a brief look at how each partner will benefit from Tencent’s new array of services:
Ankr will collaborate with Tencent Cloud as an infrastructure provider to “jointly build a full suite of blockchain API services that enable a high-performing globally distributed and decentralized network of RPC nodes.”
Avalanche: Developers should know that Avalanche will collaborate with Tencent Cloud to create scalable solutions. A “completely synchronized Avalanche full node has been set up on Tencent Cloud, and it will enable efficient and speedy node creation for developers,” according to the statement.
Scroll: Scroll is working on an open-source, fully EVM-compatible zk-Rollup, and the two will collaborate on scaling solutions.
Sui: This lesser-known Layer-1 blockchain will optimize high-performance gaming and bolster infrastructure needs for Web3 gaming builders in particular.
Tencent has announced that its self-developed video transcoding chip is now in mass production.
Tencent Holdings announced on Monday that its self-developed video transcoding processor Canghai had achieved mass production and is now enabling services ranging from cloud gaming to video live streaming.
Tens of thousands of its Canghai chips, first disclosed in 2021, have been serving clients in fields ranging from cloud gaming to video live streaming, according to the Shenzhen-based company, best known for its popular messaging app WeChat.
According to the business, the Canghai chip “focuses on solving the impossible triangle of excellent image quality, low latency, and low cost in video encoding and decoding.”
Tencent, best known as a software business, announced three self-designed chips in 2021, joining other Chinese digital behemoths in responding to Beijing’s appeal to assist China in developing its semiconductor industry in the face of a growing number of US sanctions.
Tencent has also created an artificial intelligence chip called Zixiao and a network interface controller chip called Xuanling in addition to Canghai.
According to the internet giant, Tencent has a long-term goal to research, develop, and invest in semiconductors.
“A number of chips have reached the market at a large scale.”
The company stated that their AI inference processor Zixiao, which aims to improve processing efficiency, has been used to handle internal operations.
However, the company’s Xuanling chip is now assisting it in “building the next generation of high-performance network infrastructure.”
Tencent’s stock has plummeted.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. fell the most in over two months on news that its largest shareholder, Prosus NV, may continue to liquidate the Chinese tech firm’s stock.
Read Also: How the big firms in the UK have responded
After word that Prosus planned to deposit an extra 96 million shares into the city’s stock clearing system, generally a precursor to selling, the internet company’s shares fell 5.2% to HK$357.2 in Hong Kong, the most since late January. Prosus shares sank to 5.5% in Amsterdam, while parent Naspers fell to 3.6% in Johannesburg.
Tencent’s US-traded online counterparts saw their shares fall in premarket trading, with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. down more than 1.5%. In addition, the KraneShares CSI China Internet Fund, an exchange-traded fund, fell 1.6%.
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