ICO was wiped out, is blockchain technology a blessing or a curse?

In the first half of this year, with the skyrocketing price of virtual currencies represented by Bitcoin, the new financing method of ICO (Initial Coin Offering) has developed rapidly in China, and a large number of altcoins have emerged. In the first half of the year alone, the amount of financing obtained through ICO has exceeded the investment of traditional VCs, and the cumulative financing scale of ICO has reached 2.616 billion yuan.

The ICO bubble, which was full of chaos and reflected the golden light, finally burst

Now this crazy asset bubble has burst. On September 2, the "2017 DACA Blockchain International Summit Forum" hosted by the Asian DACA Blockchain Association and the Wuhai Municipal Government of Inner Mongolia was suddenly stopped one day before the event. This is the second time that relevant departments have "taken action" on blockchain activities recently.

On the afternoon of September 4, the central bank and seven other ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing Risks of Token Issuance and Financing". The "Notice" pointed out that recently, a large number of activities in China have emerged through the issuance of tokens, including initial token offerings (ICOs), speculation is prevalent, and illegal financial activities are suspected, which has seriously disrupted the economic and financial order. From the date of this announcement, all types of token issuance and financing activities should be stopped immediately.

After the announcement, the prices of various virtual currencies plummeted. As of now, the price of Bitcoin on Huobi.com is 24,000 yuan, while last week, the price was around 30,000 yuan. The introduction of regulatory policies has dealt a heavy blow to the ICO, which is full of obstacles and everyone wants to reap the benefits. It has curbed this farce of "relying on a white paper to make tens of millions" and "waiting for the token price to rise, and everyone will dream of getting rich" before it has a greater impact.

Beer under the foam: What does ICO have to do with blockchain?

The crazy ICO in the guise of blockchain is like a glass of beer full of foam. After the bubbles are blown up by regulatory policies, the beer left at the bottom - blockchain technology, is what we should really pay attention to. It is worth noting that the regulatory announcement of more than 1,000 words did not mention blockchain once, which also represents the attitude of relevant departments towards blockchain. As a huge technological innovation, blockchain should see its true value and significance, regardless of those ICOs that are under the guise of blockchain but are actually empty.

Blockchain technology is a new distributed infrastructure and design paradigm that uses block chain data structures to verify and store data, uses distributed node consensus algorithms to generate and update data, uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access, and uses smart contracts composed of automated script codes to program and operate data. Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, immutability, unique trust, and anonymity, and has many applications in finance, anti-counterfeiting traceability, copyright protection, etc. Only by applying blockchain technology in appropriate fields can it play its due value.

After the clearing, we will explore the development of blockchain technology at the national level

Last October, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology took the lead in releasing the "White Paper on the Development of Blockchain Technology and Applications in China", exploring in depth the global blockchain development trends from the national and government levels; in December last year, the "13th Five-Year National Informatization Plan" issued by the State Council clearly listed blockchain as a strategic frontier technology; in May this year, the Blockchain Research Laboratory of the China Electronics Standardization Institute released the first blockchain standard "Blockchain Reference Architecture".

Recently, CCID (Qingdao) Blockchain Research Institute, jointly established by China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Beijing Tiande Technology Co., Ltd., settled in Qingdao. Cai Weide, an expert of my country's Thousand Talents Program and director of the Digital Technology and Blockchain Laboratory of Beihang University, became the chief scientist of the project. He believes that my country's blockchain industry is expected to be at the forefront of the world.

The country’s recognition and support for blockchain technology is self-evident.

We should be rational about ICO, but we don’t need to lose confidence in blockchain. For blockchain, it has just begun. This massive ICO supervision has brought the seemingly profound concept of blockchain to the public. Blockchain technology will soon be as popular as artificial intelligence, attracting the attention and understanding of the whole nation.

For developers, regulation is undoubtedly a good thing. From the industrial level, the development of blockchain has changed from "empty talk" to "practical work"; from the personal development level, there is a serious shortage of talent in China's blockchain companies, especially blockchain talents who master the core underlying technology of blockchain. This has brought huge opportunities to developers to enter the market in advance and master this technology that is about to become a trend.

The best strategy is to let blockchain return to its essence of technology and application and use it properly. And how to better combine blockchain technology with current application scenarios and give full play to its original power is what we should pay most attention to at present.