Alibaba To Launch its Own Crypto-Currency Soon!

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Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese multinational e-commerce, retail, Internet, AI and technology conglomerate founded in 1999. They operate various businesses and also derive support for their ecosystem from the businesses and services of related and affiliated companies. The major businesses and the businesses of Alibaba’s related companies include Taobao Marketplace which is, in fact, China’s largest mobile commerce destination.

In 2012, two of Alibaba’s portals handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales. At closing time on the date of its initial public offering (IPO), 19 September 2014, Alibaba’s market value was US$231 billion.

As of January 2018, Alibaba’s market cap stood at US$490 billion. It is one of the top 10 most valuable and biggest companies in the world.

And recently, this Chinese e-commerce giant has launched a surprise cryptocurrency mining platform, unconfirmed sources surfacing today claim.

CnLedger, a Twitter-based local crypto news information provider, relayed the report from Chinese Internet service qq.com, stating Alibaba’s ‘P2P Nodes’ platform had “launched” after a registration in October 2017.

According to the available material from cnLedger, Alibaba “may incorporate” P2P Nodes in its e-commerce platform “in future”:

Chinese internet giant Tencent was found to have registered the blockchain-related trademark “Ether Lock”.

( 腾讯加码区块链项目 已悄然注册“以太锁”商标
腾讯加码区块链项目 已悄然注册“以太锁”商标 )

The moves run contrary to the current regulatory narrative coming from Beijing. Authorities have recently made known a desire to slowly reduce participation in Bitcoin mining, while regulators are also moving to eradicate the last traces of centralized crypto-to-fiat trading.

P2P Nodes also represents an apparent U-turn for Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who in December declared that the world was “not ready” for engagement with cryptocurrency.

In an interview with CNBC around the same time, Ma revealed that Alibaba had “spent a lot of efforts” researching Blockchain technology, but that Bitcoin is “not for him”.

Cryptocurrency markets continue to feel the pressure in part from China’s latest regulatory moves, with Bitcoin losing almost 15% and altcoins much more in the past 24 hours’ trading.

It is worthy to note that, Alibaba is the world’s largest and most valuable retailer since April 2016, after it surpassed Walmart, with operations in over 200 countries, as well as one of the largest Internet companies. Its online sales and profits surpassed all US retailers (including Walmart, Amazon and eBay) combined since 2015. It has been expanding into the media industry, with revenues rising 3-digit percents year on year. It also orchestrated China’s Singles’ Day into the world’s biggest online and offline shopping day, with its own sales reaching over US$25.4 billion on 11 November 2017.

As of November 2017, Alibaba has over 550 million monthly active mobile users across its platforms. It also provides an online digital distribution service 9Apps, which hosts a huge amount of content and applications for downloads.

In 2017, Alibaba became the first Asian company to break the US$400 billion value mark, before Tencent’s US$500 billion valuations broke the record in the same year.

Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial was ranked sixth in Fortune’s Change the World list, recognised for the positive green environmental impact of its Ant Forest, the world’s largest platform for tracking individuals’ carbon footprints. Ant Financial and its partners have achieved considerable success in the reduction of CO2 emissions.

Alibaba has also announced that it will invest 100 billion yuan over five years to build a global logistics network, underpinning an aggressive overseas expansion, and demonstrating Alibaba’s commitment to building the most efficient logistics network in China and around the world. It is investing 5.3 billion yuan in Cainiao Smart Logistics Network to boost its stake to 51 percent from 47 percent.

The investment would value Cainiao, a joint venture of top Chinese logistics firms, at around US$20 billion. It is also rapidly expanding its e-commerce network abroad.