Alibaba Founder Says Digital Currencies Are The Future

Alibaba founder Jack Ma said that digital currencies are the future and they will become able to create more value during a speech yesterday. In today’s latest cryptocurrency news, we find out more about his opinions.

Billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma said that digital currencies could help create a new global financial system and attacked global banking regulations as well. It wasn’t clear what exactly the entrepreneur meant by digital currencies. Jack Ma said that digital currencies will play a role in a new global financial system but attacked worldwide regulation. The founder of the biggest e-commerce company made more comments during a speech at the Bund Summit in Shanghai:

 “Digital currency could create value and we should think about how to establish a new type of financial system through digital currency.”

It’s not clear that the entrepreneur who is now worth $61 billion, means by “digital currencies.” As one could expect, the community was quick to speculate on what Ma was talking about when he mentioned digital currencies. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao wrote that it was an amazing speech where he talked about a lot of cryptocurrencies and the future. However, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin was quick to ask Zhao what exactly Ma meant by the term digital currencies. Zhao responded that “the meaning is up for interpretation.”

By 数字货币 does he mean "cryptocurrency" or much more watered-down forms of centralized digital currency though?

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 25, 2020

Cryptocurrencies are banned in China but bitcoin and other digital assets are still traded in the region. Chinese BTC miners also mine the bulk of the new Bitcoin. so it is possible that Ma was talking about a Central Bank Digital Currency like China’s digital yuan during his speech as countries across the world are rushing to develop a centralized digital currency. However, China is winning the race with the digital yuan which is already in a testing stage. Ma also said that global regulations like the Basel Accords international banking supervision framework that was introduced in 2010, were out-dated and “like an old people’s club.”

Ma added that worldwide regulations are stifling China’s development and are not thinking about the younger people and the developing countries and their opportunities. Ant Financial which is an affiliate company of Alibaba is about to launch an IPO valued at $30 billion which is thought to be the world’s biggest.