China has made its opinions on cryptocurrency very well known since it clamped down on them a few years back. The country has been very complimentary of blockchain technology, and is even working towards creating its own cryptocurrency, but does not have time for traditional decentralized cryptocurrencies.

However, the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID), which is part of the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has been publishing reports and rankings on some of the better-known coins. These rankings have seen 17 iterations and despite Bitcoin being the original crypto, and the most well-known, The CCID only ranks it 14th.

At the top of the list, and having been there for most of the time since the rankings began, is EOS, with TRON coming in second and Ethereum taking third. Bitcoin has actually fallen three places since the last rankings having been overtaken by Cosmos (ATOM), Stellar (XLM) and Dash.

Technology, applicability and creativity

According to the CCID, the rankings are based on three main criteria. These are technology, applicability and creativity. To this end, the low ranking of Bitcoin is not too surprising for although it was the original blockchain, and thus an important technology, it has been overtaken by newer ideas.

More so, Bitcoin has low application as the coin is purely used for financial reasons as it currently stands. More so, despite being created as a peer to peer digital cash system, Bitcoin has steered more towards being a store of value and thus is hardly ‘used’ just accumulated and held.

Creativity is also rather low on the list as Bitcoin is very robust, but still quite basic. There are much more innovative projects out there, and these usually fall under the programmable blockchains such as EOS, TRON and Ethereum, giving reason to why they are in the top three.

Blockchain first

China’s view on cryptocurrencies may not be too important given the fact that they are not even to be spoken of. The importance is in the blockchain technology and thus the weighing heavily favouring those chains that offer more than financial gain.

However, China’s view on cryptocurrency should not be totally disregarded as their drive is to push for a more applicable and useful growth in the technology. Bitcoin may not need the plaudits from China, but the belief in EOS and Ethereum, for instance, can certainly help proliferate blockchain into a more global technology.