Wuhan, a city in central China, has scrapped a draft plan to attract investments in non-fungible token (NFT). This is because government officials are still wary of digital assets, even though they support blockchain development.
In the latest industrial plan from the Wuhan government for the development of the city’s metaverse from 2022 to 2025, there is no longer a line about NFTs that was in a draft plan from August. In the original plan, it said that the city would work harder to bring business and investment to areas like NFTs.
Even though the government still encourages companies to look into “decentralized operation models” and says it will support the development of Web3, neither NFTs nor digital collectibles were mentioned in the new version, which came out on Friday.
Web3 is an unclear idea that is often described as the next generation of the internet built on decentralized technologies like blockchain. Outside of mainland China, self-proclaimed Web3 apps often use cryptocurrencies and non-fiat cryptocurrency and NFTs.
On the mainland, trading and mining cryptocurrencies are against the law, so state-run organizations have been trying to move blockchain development forward without using cryptocurrencies.
But so far, people have had different reactions to local governments’ attempts to guide the development of the metaverse, Web3, and other popular technologies.
As part of its 14th five-year plan, the Shanghai government promised support for Web3 development for the first time in July. However, entrepreneurs were skeptical that it would make a big difference in a country that doesn’t like cryptocurrencies and decentralization.
Wuhan said in its new plan that it wants to grow or bring in more than 200 metaverse companies by 2025 and build at least two metaverse industrial estates.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, has only let professional investors trade cryptocurrencies for the past few years. It recently made it clear that its position on virtual assets is different from that of mainland China.
On Monday, just before the city’s FinTech Week event, the government proposed a set of policy changes that they hope will restore Hong Kong’s status as a cryptocurrency hub. These include a new licensing system for virtual asset providers that will let financial services sell crypto-related assets to retail traders.
Because of this, some mainland financial institutions, which are not allowed to have anything to do with cryptocurrency assets at home, are now thinking about starting or reactivating virtual asset projects in Hong Kong, the digital asset leader at Deloitte China told the Post this week.
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