Hangzhou joins the global competition for attracting blockchain companies.
Despite the country’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies, ICO’s, and mining, the Hangzhou Blockchain Industrial Park in China is dangling millions of dollars in an effort to draw in start-ups and tech talent.
The tech park, which was opened in April 9 this year, holds a 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) funding from the Xiongan Global Blockchain Innovation Fund, financed by the Yuhang District Government. The funds are for pushing blockchain innovation further.
And now they have announced that they are opening up a series of funds, which are broken down as follows: 3 million yuan ($468,000) for individual Masters and PhD candidates, 15 million yuan ($2.3 million) rent aid for start-ups in their incubation platform, and up to 20 million yuan ($3.1 million) for equity investment guidance.
According to their announcement, awardees of the grants can set up at the park. “The industrial park collects high-quality projects in the blockchain industry all year round. Accepted projects can be located in the Hangzhou Blockchain Industrial Park, enjoying preferential policies and making full use of the park’s resources.”
The move adds Hangzhou to the growing list of blockchain-cities. Over the past months, several territories have been opening up their doors and offering certain incentives to attract blockchain start-ups and talent. This makes sense seeing as the rapidly growing industry draws in large amounts of investments and revenue.
Last month, Bermuda’s Premier David Burt promoted their InsurTech Sandbox. “We are the ideal place for companies that are looking to test out new age products and services—to have them in a constrained environment to see how they can work and then they can scale them up to service the rest of the world. That’s where we’re positioning Bermuda,” Burt said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Shortly after, Australia followed, allocating $68 million for digital identity and blockchain projects. Before that, “Blockchain Island” Malta successfully hauled in cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and OKEx.
Despite its apparent distaste for cryptocurrency activities, it looks like China is gearing up for the global competition in the blockchain arena, integrating the technology into government agencies. Recently, the Shenzhen government partnered up with Chinese internet giant Tencent to fight tax fraud. Last month, the National Audit of the People’s Republic of China also released a proposal to use blockchain technology for auditing big data.
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