the Chinese microchip company now accepts Bitcoin

A couple of days ago, the Chinese company Nano Labs published a press release on its official website announcing that it has started accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment.

Note that, at least in theory, in China there is still a ban on the trading of cryptocurrencies, but evidently it does not concern the acceptance of Bitcoin as a form of payment.

Who is Nano Labs?

Nano Labs Ltd is a company that designs integrated circuits (microchips) and provides technological solutions in China.

In particular, it deals with high-throughput computing (HTC) chips, high-performance computing (HPC) chips, distributed computing and storage solutions, visual processing chips with intelligent network interface cards (NIC), and distributed rendering. 

Furthermore, the company has created a complete architecture of flow processing units (known as FPU) that offers a solution integrating the functionalities of HTC and HPC. In particular, its Cuckoo series is one of the first near-memory HTC chips available on the market. 

The Cuckoo series was launched in 2020, while in 2022 they launched the Darkbird series.

The proprietary HPC chips Darkbird were then integrated into the machine for Bitcoin mining by Nano Labs, iPollo. They have therefore been active for years in the crypto sector, despite the Chinese ban.

Nano Labs begins to accept Bitcoin

Nano Labs a couple of days ago announced that it has created a Coinbase account and has started accepting payments in Bitcoin in exchange for its products.

They declare: 

“This strategic move marks the company’s commitment to embrace the latest innovations in financial technology and to enhance its global transaction capabilities”.

They also add that they have taken this step to offer customers and partners greater flexibility in payments, in response to the growing demand for digital currency transactions in the tech sector. 

They also admit between the lines that such a request has come particularly from foreign companies seeking efficient and secure cross-border transactions.

Furthermore, they reveal that the acceptance of payments in Bitcoin aligns with the company’s long-term vision to remain at the forefront of technological advancements and to offer added value to customers worldwide. 

The objective of this initiative is to attract a wider range of clients and partners. 

The importance of Nano Labs with the inclusion of Bitcoin

Nano Labs, despite being based in Hangzhou, China, is listed on the bull market at Nasdaq.

It landed on the USA stock exchange in mid-2022, that is, just over two years ago, in the middle of a bear-market. 

In fact, from the initial price of $76 of its shares, in just four months this had already plummeted below $10. 

Although in mid-2023 it had returned close to $30, and in February of this year it experienced a very brief peak even above $40, starting from April it recorded a new strong decline, partly linked to the economic difficulties of China. 

The minimum peak was recorded in August, when it even fell below $3, but in September with the recovery of the Chinese stock markets, it at least managed to climb back to $9. 

However, this is a decidedly volatile stock, given that at the beginning of November it had returned to $3, and it only took the news of having enabled payments in Bitcoin to bring it back above $7.

Note that the company capitalizes only 118 million dollars, and therefore it should be considered a company of lesser importance in the microchip sector (that of Nvidia, which capitalizes over 3,000 billion). 

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Bitcoin and China

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In 2021 China issued yet another ban on cryptocurrencies. 

At the time, the Asian state held the largest single share by nation of Bitcoin’s hashrate, but within a very few months, it disappeared from this market. 

The ban, however, was not able to eliminate crypto from the country, so much so that by the following year they had returned to second place worldwide after the USA for Bitcoin hashrate. 

Furthermore, that ban also concerned the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, but starting from the following year, the Chinese learned to use foreign exchanges to circumvent it. 

And so, in the end, China has effectively had to abandon the idea of blocking cryptocurrencies, to the point of having authorized this year the issuance of crypto ETFs on the Hong Kong stock exchange. 

Although the ban is theoretically still in place, in reality, the Chinese state no longer strongly opposes mining, crypto trading, or even the use of Bitcoin as a means of payment, even if this does not fully fall under the ban if done voluntarily and knowingly by both parties (buyer and especially seller). Therefore, the decision of Nano Labs does not seem to violate any Chinese law.