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Cryptocurrency in China: What’s New in Country’s Latest Crackdown?

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Cryptocurrency in China: What’s New in Country’s Latest Crackdown?
China’s most powerful regulators have intensified the country’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies with a blanket ban on all crypto transactions and crypto mining. The move sent Bitcoin and other major coins lower, as well as pressurising crypto and blockchain-related stocks.

What’s new?
Ten Chinese agencies, including the central bank and banking, securities and foreign exchange regulators, have vowed to work together to root out “illegal” cryptocurrency activity.

While China has been putting in place increasingly stricter rules on virtual currencies, it has now made all activities related to them illegal and sent a signal of intent they plan to get even tougher on enforcing the rules.

China’s central People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it was illegal to facilitate cryptocurrency trading and that it planned to severely punish anyone doing so, including those working for overseas platforms from within China.

The National Development and Reform Council (NDRC) said it would launch a nationwide crackdown on cryptocurrency mining as it tries to phase the sector out entirely.

What’s come before?
China does not recognise cryptocurrencies as legal tender and the banking system does not accept cryptocurrencies or provide relevant services.

In 2013, the government defined Bitcoin as a virtual commodity and said individuals were allowed to freely participate in its online trade.

However, later that year, financial regulators, including the PBOC, banned banks and payment companies from providing Bitcoin-related services.

In September 2017, China banned initial coin offerings (ICOs) in a bid to protect investors and curb financial risks.

The ICO rules also banned cryptocurrency trading platforms from converting legal tender into cryptocurrencies and vice versa.

The restrictions prompted most such trading platforms to shut down with many moving offshore.

The ICO rules also barred financial firms and payment companies from providing services for ICOs and cryptocurrencies, including account openings, registration, trading, clearing, and liquidation services.

By July 2018, 88 virtual currency trading platforms and 85 ICO platforms had withdrawn from the market, the PBOC said.

Why does it keep tightening the rules?
The huge run-up in price in Bitcoin and other coins over the past year has revived cryptocurrency trading in China, with investors finding ways round the existing regulations. That’s come as the country is trying to develop its own official digital currency, becoming the first major economy to do so.

Earlier this year, Chinese regulators tightened restrictions that banned financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrency. An industry directive said that speculative Bitcoin trading had rebounded and was infringing “the safety of people’s property and disrupting the normal economic and financial order”.

Many Chinese investors were now trading on platforms owned by Chinese exchanges that had relocated overseas, including Huobi and OKEx. Meanwhile, China’s over-the-counter market for cryptocurrencies has become busy again, while once-dormant trading chartrooms on social media have revived.

China-focused exchanges, which also include Binance and MXC, allow Chinese individuals to open accounts online, a process that takes just a few minutes. They also facilitate peer-to-peer deals in OTC markets that help convert Chinese yuan into cryptocurrencies.

Such transactions are made through banks, or online payment channels such as Alipay or WeChat Pay, though these have since promised to conduct due diligence on clients and set up monitoring systems targeting key websites and accounts to detect illegal crypto-related transactions.

Retail investors also buy “computing power” from cryptocurrency miners, who design various investment schemes that promise quick and fat returns.

What’s the impact of the crackdown?
While cryptocurrencies fell on Friday, the fall was less pronounced than the slide seen in May when China’s State Council, or cabinet, vowed to crack down on bitcoin mining.

The test will be whether China is able to find and punish platforms and people breaking the rules.

Some analysts said that based on what’s gone before, determined investors would still likely find a way to trade.

“While retail traders in China may no longer be able to access online exchange platforms that are now illegal, crypto funds may be able to move management of their funds offshore,” said Ganesh Viswanath Natraj, Assistant Professor of Finance at Warwick Business School.

© Thomson Reuters 2021


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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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