“The official also emphasized the importance of security in blockchain technology, insisting that it would be a key aspect while developing the standards. Further, he stressed that the formulation of national blockchain standards was a governmental effort to guide the industry first and foremost, rather than hastening the advance of blockchain development.”

China have hit numerous headlines recently, due to their turbulent views towards cryptocurrencies . Now of course, China aren’t alone in this and overall, internationally crypto-regulation is a hot debate. There seems to be two key camps and approaches to this. Some wish to take a very authoritarian approach, outright banning all things crypto. Others, wish to implement Japanese style regulation, designed to allow the industry to flourish, under guidelines that can in theory, protect traders and investors, without hampering their liberty too much. In order for the latter to occur however, regulations do need to be rolled out, in either scenario rules will limit some aspects of cryptocurrency trading but ultimately, many believe that in order to secure the future of the industry, this sort of thing needs to happen worldwide, China included. According to CCN, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China confirmed that the authorities are now working towards setting up crypto-regulations which promise to remain open to aspects of decentralisation and blockchain technology . According to CCN:These regulations are set to roll out in 2019 and will cover all aspects of the industry. As it stands, it does seem that China are likely to take a Japanese style approach to this and focus on the security of the customers and the assets themselves, rather than heavily regulating traders, regulations will need to be met by exchanges and the currencies themselves. Through this, China are not going to lock themselves out of the blockchain revolution, something that many people have worried about. The advantages to this technology are huge, this is something that hopefully, both the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the rest of the Chinese authorities are now starting to recognise. As a result of this news, we may see trading activity step up a gear in and around China over the next few months. As talks continue, we expect to get a better idea of the sorts of regulations that may be established later in 2018. 2019 then, may well see a huge turning point for cryptocurrencies and the blockchain evolution in China, hopefully this time next year, we will be reporting some very good things indeed as a result of this.