Guo Yuhang: Call on the country to pilot a special tax for bitcoin mining, and to nurture the development of blockchain technology

On December 8, the Blockchain Summit Forum hosted by the China Blockchain Application Research Center was held in Beijing. The theme of this forum is very interesting. It is called "The Prospect of the Future Popular Blockchain 2020", and you can see the wonderful expectations of the organizers.

At the meeting, Guo Yuhang, Director of Psychology in China's Blockchain Applied Research, shared the topic "Development Trends and Policy Suggestions for the Blockchain Industry". He reviewed the industry history and policy evolution of blockchain in China in the past few years, and sincerely and bravely put forward his own suggestions:

"I hope that the country will experimentally open a special tax for bitcoin mining, allowing creators and enjoyers of bitcoin wealth to pay taxes in compliance, so that their wealth can be safely put in their pockets, and this tax item will be included in the blockchain. R & D of technology. "

The following is a compilation of Guo Yuhang's speech, which was published by Babbitt based on shorthand.

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Let me first share my experience as a lawyer: In 2002, an elderly man in his 60s returned to Shanghai from the United States. He left Shanghai in 1948 and hurried to the United States with his family. Decades later, he returned with the Kuomintang title deed and demanded the return of his four old bungalows in Shanghai. It took me six years to help him find the house, but I couldn't prove that the house was hiss, because the title deeds of the Kuomintang and our new China address were difficult to match. Until the death of the old gentleman last year, he still could not get all his property back, and only received a small amount of compensation for the price.

If there was a blockchain 100 years ago, each person's private property was truthfully recorded through nodes in different countries around the world, no matter how the regime changes and how the data is annihilated, this global public trust network will still be unruly Our private property rights have been deleted and cannot be tampered with, so that the real property rights cannot be violated technically.

Development history of China's blockchain industry

2011 was the year that the Chinese geek world began to discuss Bitcoin on a large scale. Wu Jihan translated Satoshi's Bitcoin white paper, and Yang Linke founded China's first Bitcoin exchange, Bitcoin China. Among the pioneers in these industries are both high-level students from Beijing University, veterans, and researchers within the system. Hong Shuning, who was still working at the Nanjing Branch of the People's Bank of China at that time, wrote an article called "Bitcoin OAU Reverse, Challenges US Dollar Hegemony", which did not attract much attention at the time. But eight years later, when we review this article, there are many interesting points. For example, he called on the country to carry out bitcoin mining, and to hold the production and collection of bitcoin in the hands of the Chinese government, forming an effective impact on the hegemony of the US dollar. . However, if the government accepted Mr. Hong Shuning's opinion at the time, I believe that many blockchain entrepreneurs here will lose the opportunity to participate in this process of making money.

2013 was a year of commercialization of China's blockchain, and today many well-known and well-known blockchain companies have been born. For example, Jia Nan Yunzhi, who has just clocked the bell on Nasdaq, Bitmain founded by Zhanke Group and Wu Jihan, and Shenma Mining Machine, which is ranked as the world's three largest mining machine manufacturers, their volume accounts for the global bit The coin mining industry has more than half of the country. OKcoin, founded by Xu Mingxing, and Huobi, founded by Li Lin, are also leaders in China's virtual currency industry.

In 2014, Zhou Xiaochuan, then Governor of the People ’s Bank of China, initiated the establishment of a “special research group on legal digital currencies”, the predecessor of the “Central Bank Digital Currency Research Institute”. It can be said that without Governor Zhou's foresight, we cannot quickly launch the central bank's digital currency DC / EP. In 2016, the Central Bank's Digital Currency Research Group fully explained the prototype structure and technical path of the central bank's digital currency. In 2019, the People's Bank of China became the first major country to launch a digital currency plan.

2017 was a huge turning point. On September 4, the five ministries issued a ban, and the centralized digital currency exchange was closed and moved overseas. From today's perspective, this has a very positive side. It has killed off MLM fraud through ICOs, which infringed on the rights and interests of ordinary people. But it failed to avoid the one-size-fits-all practice in the process of financial innovation: The 9.4 ban forced a large number of entrepreneurs to go abroad, causing immeasurable losses in brain drain. Faced with the chaos of financial innovation, how to discern falsehood and protect the true entrepreneurs is an unavoidable subject in the future institutional construction. The United States has a system of exemption for financial innovation. As long as you start a business for the benefit of the people, your information disclosure is complete. Without a regulatory sandbox, you can also give entrepreneurs a certain degree of exemption without accounting for later This is an effective institutional means to protect the initiative of innovation.

In 2018, the General Secretary actually pointed out the core value of blockchain technology at the meeting of the academicians of the two academies, which represents a new generation of information technology to accelerate breakthrough applications. But this speech did not attract widespread attention in a small area.

In 2019, it will become the year of the blockchain. In April, the National Development and Reform Commission included Bitcoin mining in the industry directory of the eliminated industry, and deleted it in the final draft issued in November. In June, the Facebook Libra coin white paper was released, reflecting the subversive power of the blockchain. In October, the Central Political Bureau's collective study of blockchain was both unexpected and reasonable. Recently, the first share of the global blockchain was born in China. The day before Jia Nan Yunzhi went public, the Hangzhou Light Show issued an ad "I love BTC, I love Bitcoin". Hangzhou, at the forefront of China's innovation, known as "China's Silicon Valley", can have such an inclusive attitude, which is the hope for China's future innovation. In December, the Supreme People's Court cracked down on the crime of blockchain currency transfer. We hope that this time our supervision will be released in a timely manner. While promoting the development of blockchain technology, it will also crack down on scammers and bad practices. The sad consequence of bad money expelling good money.

Evolution of China's Blockchain Related Policies

We can also review the evolution of blockchain-related policies. The eighteenth government leadership team has conducted 43 collective studies by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. None of them has touched on specific technologies, and only twice have they talked about general technologies in general. In the learning process of the 19th Central Political Bureau, we saw only three of the eighteen studies talked about very specific technologies, including big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

Big data was born in 2004 and was listed as a learning target in 2017 after 13 years of development. It was only 68 years after the birth of artificial intelligence that it was included in collective learning. Blockchain, after only 10 years, has been highly valued by the central government. Behind this, there are both external and internal causes.

The external cause is Libra . Less than ten days after the June 18 white paper was issued, our China Blockchain Application Research Center received unanimous requests from all ministries and commissions, including the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the United Front Work Department and other departments. We quickly prepared to hold two analysis meetings on Libra in Shanghai and Beijing, and invited regulators to learn about the possible impact Libra on China. At the same time, the central bank quickly organized four major banks, Tencent and Ali to conduct research on Libra. We are pleased to find that China's regulatory and regulatory authorities have greatly improved their sensitivity to new technologies. In order to win the US Congressional hearing, Zuckerberg mentioned China's threat 21 times. He said that if China's financial system becomes the choice of more and more countries, US sanctions on the world will be greatly affected. Obstacles. How can elevating a technological development to such a high political level not cause us to pay attention to the technology and digital currency?

The internal cause is a huge demand for China's development and governance . At the just-concluded Fourth Plenary Session, one point of the media did not expand and explain it well. That is, data is starting to become a factor of production. Some of our labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, and management have been liberalized. Although some have not been liberalized, such as land, we have not seen the possibility of full liberalization in a short time. To further develop the economy, new drivers need to be found, and data will become an important factor in national strategy. Many data companies have recently been arrested for criminal offences. The country has begun to use and acquire reptile data, has a deeper understanding, and raises it to a strategic level for attention.

Blockchain is the foundation of the data world. Professor Zhang Shousheng, who has passed away, mentioned the status of blockchain as an infrastructure in many public lectures. His ideal is to hope that everyone has their own ownership of the data and can generate data value. Data is not monopolized by the Internet giants, but returned to the hands of each of our data producers and owners.

Breaking future expectations of Internet giants' monopoly

Blockchain challenging Internet giants is one of the dreams of every practitioner. Why is it possible? Because it does solve a huge problem in our trading process, which is trust. In the two or three decades of the previous generation of booming Internet technology, the unfavorable consequence of centralized trust was the monopoly of data, which resulted in a greater degree of competition.

We frequently use WeChat to bring value to Tencent, but neither the ownership of WeChat account nor the ownership of data belongs to Tencent; Alipay once promoted e-commerce transactions, but today its monopoly on data brings new entrepreneurs An indelible inhibitory effect; Didi solves the problem of trust in the sharing economy, but do we need a monopolistic Internet giant to constantly control the travel of each of us from the perspective of God and obtain 25 from each transaction? What about the percentage above the percentage? I think such a phenomenon will cease to exist after the popularity of the blockchain. Peer-to-peer transactions will remove all monopoly and all the shadows that monopoly has brought us.

Supervision and innovation must be grasped with both hands, both hands must be tough. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Cyberspace Information Office have recently introduced active policies related to blockchain and digital currencies. After the general secretary's speech in November, the China Blockchain Application Research Center opened three branch centers within a month, and opened branch centers in Fujian, Jiangsu, and Sichuan. The main leaders of the local government participated in the unveiling. We have seen the importance attached to blockchain by governments at all levels, but what problems can blockchain technology solve? In fact, it is still relatively vague and needs to be clarified.

Proposed pilot Bitcoin mining special tax

For future policy recommendations, we propose: prudent tolerance, use technology to supervise technology, resolutely crack down on illegal fundraising under the name of blockchain, strengthen industry self-discipline, establish a regulatory sandbox, and call on blockchain special zones … Various policy recommendations. But there is one last point. I think it is relatively more likely to land and also has bold policy suggestions:

"We believe that bitcoin mining should not only be included in the phase-out industry, but also that a special tax for bitcoin mining should be piloted and included in the development of blockchain technology."

Looking back at the development of blockchain technology, we see a phenomenon that most of these people who invest in blockchain technology that does not make money are overwhelming believers who gained wealth freedom in Bitcoin mining in the early days. They know that the day when the blockchain technology is mature and the business model is profitable, it is far in the future. But they firmly believe that blockchain technology can benefit humankind, and put their wealth from bitcoin into the development of blockchain technology. With the respect of national policies for blockchain technology, the guidance funds of governments around the world have become interested in this field, but we are always worried that the entry of capital led by the state into this new technology field may not produce a 100% positive influences. We also look forward to allowing creators and enjoyers of bitcoin wealth to pay taxes in compliance, so that their wealth can be safely put in their pockets, so that this part of the tax can be invested in the development and investment of blockchain technology. We also hope to see more blockchain models that generate profits and cash income in the future, which is rare now.

In 2020, the policy frequently blows warm winds, but the warm spring may not bloom. From 2015 to 2017, there was a short-term so-called bull market, but the vast majority of blockchain entrepreneurs are more practical in the cold winter and immerse themselves in developing technology. When the policy warm wind suddenly came up overnight, we were worried that more hustle and bustle and more scammers confusing the concept would make the technology be killed without being fully mature. At the same time, we have also seen the lack of capital entry, including the dilemma of state capital seeking access to it. We expect blockchain technology to take root and sprout, and spring is in full bloom!

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