Joe Tsai, the vice chairman of the Alibaba Group, expressed his love for crypto currencies on Twitter on Tuesday.
More and more people are speaking out
Joe Tsai, the vice chairman of Chinese multinational group Alibaba Group, has stated that he loves crypto. Tsai is also the owner of the Brooklyn Nets. He bought the NBA franchise in 2019 from Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov for $2.35 billion.
“I like crypto”. According to Tsai.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao responded to the tweet with “I like Joe”.
I like Joe https://t.co/axjaRtPoe3
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 28, 2021
Tsai’s statement comes just after Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant signed a new promotional deal with Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US.
The deal will see Coinbase place crypto ads on Durant’s sports website. In addition, it will donate to the NBA star’s charitable foundation to support the youth.
While it’s not immediately clear what exactly Tsai meant by “crypto,” the 57-year-old billionaire came up with the idea earlier this year to issue phantokens and NFTs among other activities to increase fan engagement.
Tsai said the following in an October interview with NetsDaily:
“We in the NBA have the potential for teams to issue fan tokens. It has been discussed, it has not been approved, but people in Europe are already doing this with football teams in Europe.”
crypto in china
At Alibaba, Tsai is the second man behind Jack Ma, the founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant.
“In the Chinese technology industry, Ma is regarded as the creative force and Tsai as the one who turns ideas into action.” According to the New York Times in 2019.
Tsai’s statement of support for crypto can also be seen as a political statement. The Chinese government has repeatedly tried to suppress cryptocurrency adoption by major Chinese tech companies.
In September, following China’s crackdown on crypto, Alibaba announced it would stop selling specialized mining equipment. The company also banned its platforms from selling crypto currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.
The Chinese government first started restricting crypto-related activities in 2017 when it banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and crypto trading. As a result, several major exchanges including BTCC, OkCoin and Huobi were forced to leave the country or shut down completely.
Beijing renewed the measures in May this year with a ban on crypto mining. This resulted in a significant drop in the hash rate of the Bitcoin network. However, this also led to a major geopolitical shift among miners to other parts of the world, mainly to the US.