Last week saw Indian telecommunications company, Reliance Jio launch its own cryptocurrency. We begin the new week with interesting news from China that Baidu, the internet giant is launching a Blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) product. Although, this announcement from Baidu is coming a couple of months after a competitor, Tencent announced the launch of their own BaaS.
Baidu is confident that its product would be the easiest to understand among all other BaaS out there. That’s a welcome feature, considering the fact that the subject blockchain is a very complicated and technical one.
The platform was developed based on Baidu’s internal organizational developments. At the same time, the platform is able to make new exchanges while also capable of following other exchanges that adhere to cryptocurrency standards, bank credit administration, financial analysis, insurance administration and digital bills.
It’s dedicated website quotes the platform as being a “self-developed project” that can be utilized for:
“Efficient and low-cost traceability and trading, ideal for digital currency, payment and settlement, digital ticketing, bank credit management, equity proof and exchange-traded securities, insurance management, financial auditing and more.”
“We independently developed a complete set of bottom-layer blockchain protocols and actively participated in the formulation of credible blockchain standards for China Institute of Information and Communications,” said Guo Rui, Tencent’s Vice President of Payment Platforms and Financial Applications, while speaking about the platform in a gathering in Chengdu, in November 2017.
According to Baidu, the platform has been connected to the tasks of, “asset securitization and asset exchange [and] has contributed to the first asset-backed securities exchange products using blockchain technology in China.”
In addition to the above, Baidu intends to foray into IoT, AI, driverless cars and distributed computing. Baidu’s strong point at the moment appears to be its adaptability, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
Baidu has been involved in research in the FinTech, blockchain and crypto scene as far back as 2013 when it announced that it was accepting crypto as the main means of payment for its Jiasule security services. At the moment, Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba are the three Chinese tech giants dominating the blockchain adoption space in China.
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