Shanghai's New Policy Boosts Blockchain and Crypto Tech

Shanghai continues to affirm its position as one of the world's leading tech and financial hubs by announcing new strategic measures. Recently, the Shanghai Municipal People's Government Office issued a policy titled "Several Measures to Promote the High-Quality Development of the Software and Information Services Industry," with a clear focus on future-oriented technologies like blockchain, data, and AI.

One of the most significant highlights of the policy is that Shanghai will organize and implement "key demonstration projects for the application of blockchain technology." This indicates a shift in approach: instead of viewing blockchain merely as a financial technology, the city intends to integrate it into essential infrastructure. A specific example provided is supporting the use of blockchain in managing medical data, a field that demands the high security, transparency, and immutability that this technology can provide.

In parallel with promoting blockchain, this policy also opens up a groundbreaking path for the "data economy." Shanghai aims to accelerate the cultivation of "data use" scenarios for public data in critical sectors like healthcare, education, finance, and scientific research. Notably, the policy encourages financial institutions to pilot an entirely new model: data asset-backed lending. To realize this, the city will support the construction of trusted data spaces, an infrastructure where blockchain technology can play a pivotal role.

Furthermore, the new policy reveals an extremely pioneering vision by addressing models related to generative AI. Shanghai will explore promoting the establishment of a "language venture capital fund" and piloting new investment models such as "language as capital contribution." This implies that large language models (LLMs) and their training datasets could be valued and treated as a new class of capital assets, opening up a completely new field of investment.

Overall, Shanghai's new measures are not isolated initiatives. They form an integrated, comprehensive strategy where blockchain technology acts as a foundational layer for trust and transparency, thereby enabling the "assetization" of data and even AI. This move affirms Shanghai's determination to build an advanced digital economy and could set important precedents for other major cities worldwide.