PPDAI plans to raise up to $350 million in their IPO and list on the NYSE. Source
Business Insider highlights the recent news of China clamping down on ICOs and the digital currency exchanges; notes that mining has not affected by the recent changes and shares that while there will be pressure on the market that this marks the beginning of a highly regulated market. Source
A new wave of IPOs by mainland Chinese fintech companies is taking shape; P2P companies in particular are hungry for fresh capital to reinforce their business growth; two mainland-based P2P operators – Yirendai and China Rapid Finance – are currently traded in New York; Sorghum Investment last month announced a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed China Commercial Credit which would make it the third. Source
Chinese authorities on Monday ordered a ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs); a PBoC statement ordered that ICO activities should be halted starting from Monday, and ICO platforms should not engage in exchange services between fiat currencies, virtual coins and tokens; two of China's leading ICO platforms, ICOAGE and ICOINFO, had already halted services before the official statement came out. Source
On August 23 and 24, officials from the People's Bank of China and scholars from Peking University arrived in San Francisco and had in-depth discussions with delegates at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as well as some fintech companies including Coinbase, Prosper, Sofi, Circle and Ripple; discussion topics focused on digital currency, regtech, lending and inclusive finance; Sun Guofeng, the head of the Research Institute of PBoC, and Yao Qian, the head of Digital Currency Research Institute of PBoC, attended the tour; a report on the status quo of US fintech market, regulatory environment and its implications on China will be written after this visit. Source (Chinese)
Tiger Brokers, a Chinese online securities brokerage start-up backed by Wall Street billionaire investor Jim Rogers, has landed an investment from Interactive Brokers Group, the amount of which Tiger Brokers did not disclose; Tiger Brokers offers an app to allow Chinese investors to trade on US stock markets and the Hong Kong exchanges and in Chinese A shares. Source
BTCC, one of China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges, on September 14 announces that it will stop new user registration immediately, and will shut down cryptocurrency exchange business from September 30 onwards; its mining pool business will stay intact though; for now, BTCC only trades four “mainstream” cryptocurrencies, being Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and BCC. Source
Hong Kong financial regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), has announced that tokens issued via initial coin offerings (ICOs) may be classified as securities; the classification may extend beyond ICOs into digital asset exchanges dealing in the tokens. Source
Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital are investing in Bitmain, the world's largest bitcoin mining company; Bitmain is seeking $50 million in funding to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities, after previously focusing on developing chips for mining; Bitmain claimed in August that the company is at a $1 billion valuation, and is planning an IPO. Source
As of December 2016, shadow loans in China reported an annual increase of approximately 15% to 14.1 trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion); a study by UBS reports that as the market grows one area adding increased risk is regional banks, specifically banks located in China's Rust Belt region, which have been integrating the shadow loans into various methods for diversifying their balance sheet risk as the steel and metal-producing provinces struggle to remain profitable in the changing economy; the UBS report says alternative financial statement accounting regarding the loans could lead to a number of issues including overstated capital adequacy ratios, understated nonperforming loans and reduced provision charges. Source