Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, spoke out at the 2nd World Intelligence Conference in Tianjin, saying that blockchain technology is not a bubble, but Bitcoin is, Wednesday, May 16.
Ma said he has been researching blockchain for years, and believes strongly in its potential to address issues of data privacy and security for society at all levels - governments, corporations and individuals - in an "era of big data.” He stressed that security is a top priority for the e-commerce conglomerate, which reported $39.9 bln in yearly revenue in its latest fiscal Q4 earnings release, and has a trading volume of “trillions of transactions.”
Last year, Jack Ma became the richest man in Asia, according to Bloomberg, with his net worth surging to $41.8 bln. The overwhelmingly popular mobile payment app Alipay, run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, reportedly has 450 mln users.
As early as summer 2016, Ant Financial, introduced blockchain technology to improve accountability in its work with the Chinese charity industry, going on to recruit blockchain experts in the company at large the following year.
However, in line with Ma’s position, Alibaba Group has stopped short of embracing cryptocurrencies, with Alibaba Cloud recently denying rumours its newly launched ‘P2P Nodes’ network was a cryptocurrency mining platform. Later, in April, Alibaba subsidiary Taobao bannedall ICO-related advertising from its platform.
