• China: 12 months on from ban, regulators shut 13 crypto-trading apps, 23 crypto media sites, 440 online promoter accounts, 2 bank accounts offering crypto over-the-counter transactions, and more
• India: Village of 3000 in Maharashtra declares ‘independence’ from TV and mobile internet ‘addiction’ for two hours every day in bid for digital detox
• Philippines: Gov’t enacts law requiring all SIM cards to be registered, aiming to curb mobile phone scams and related crimes
• India: Hubbler platform raises $1.5M with focus on no-and-low-code digitization of business processes
• National Payments Corporation of India’s international arm partners France’s Worldline multinational payment services firm to support Indian digital payment modes in Europe
• Thailand: PropertyScout gains $5M with end-to-end real estate platform connecting realtors to buyers, renters, and owners
• Singapore: Gomu raises $5M with white-label platform providing NFT communities with hubs, marketplaces and token-gated communities without requiring experience with blockchain tech
• Australia: Woolworths supermarket giant’s MyDeal unit suffers data breach, exposing details of 2.2M customer’s details
• China’s Oppo, world’s 4th-largest smartphone firm, loses legal case brought by Nokia over patents in Germany, resulting in Oppo smartphone sales ban
“Beijing’s move to banish cryptocurrency trading and mining…seemed poised to snuff out the entire domestic industry…Instead, what’s emerged is a mix of companies that hew to the Communist Party agenda…”
• ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, enters talks with music labels to expand music streaming service into over a dozen markets, directly in competition with Spotify
• China: “Computer-generated avatars are considered a safer option by companies as Beijing cracks down on human celebrities deemed politically outspoken or with questionable morals.”
• Singapore: Pillow cryptocurrency investment platform secures $18M Series A, looking to build on emerging markets focus and existing offerings in Nigeria, Ghana, Vietnam and others
• Hong Kong: PayPal HK halts payments to HK pro-democracy group, citing unspecified ‘excessive risks’ most likely associated with increasing China ‘security’ law pressures
• US national security-related ban likely forthcoming for China’s Huawei and ZTE on all new device sales in the US, alongside ban on surveillance equipment from 3 other Chinese firms
• Indonesia: Waste4Change gains $5M Series A funding with tech monitoring and recording processes in waste management flow, providing automation in material recovery facilities
• Vietnam: Piktina raises $1M with online marketplace for secondhand fashion
Cybercrime: “October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity…So far this month, $718 million has been stolen from DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks.”
• Cambodia: An overview of insights gained by Cambodian entrepreneur group’s recent visit to ‘startup nation’ Israel
• Girls in Tech Startup Challenge 2022 applications are now open, through to November 25th
• She Loves Tech Australia Pitch Final takes place in Melbourne on Thursday 20th October, with 10 women-led tech startups set to present
• Philippines: Digital Pilipinas Festival takes place October 17th to 21st
• China: Sewingtech raises more than $1.39M in angel funding with robotics-driven automation in garment production
• Lufthansa Technik Philippines selects LTP Startup Challenge finalists, with Thailand’s Block Aero and Singapore’s Augmenteed in the top 4
• Philippines: UBX and Unit 256 partner to launch country’s first tokenized NFT platform, lowering ownership costs with fractionalization
• China: Judicial blockchain platform has stored over 2.6BN items of evidence, an increase of 18% since May this year
Singapore and a 4-day work week: “…governments of Spain, United Arab Emirates, and…Japan have truncated their work weeks in a bid to improve work-life balance and productivity.”
• South Korea: CLASSUM education-tech raises $11M pre-Series B with interactive learning platform used by more than 6000 organizations across 32 countries
• South Korea’s COMEUP 2022 startup festival is set for November 9–11, showcasing the country’s rising tech firms and solutions
ICYMI: In other news
Wider-world technology news with broad Asia Pacific relevance, or simply providing larger points of reference and food for thought.
» European Commission mulls financing fibre optic cable connecting Europe to Asia via the Arctic in bid to minimize cable vulnerabilities and avoid ‘single points of failure’
» The Digital Asset Classification Standard, from CoinDesk
» A brief intro to 10 fast-moving ‘ghost kitchens’ startups globally
» Google & Coinbase ink deal — Google to accept crypto for some cloud computing clients, with Coinbase receiving a percentage of payments which allows them to diversify away from revenue based on trading volume
» Meta partners Microsoft to bring a range of MS Office 365 products into Meta’s virtual reality platform, aiming to draw companies in to work in virtual environments
» Facebook to close down Bulletin newsletter subscription service, its Substack competitor product, in 2023
“Data from DappRadar suggests metaverse platforms Decentraland and The Sandbox each have fewer than 1,000 ‘daily active’ users, despite $1 billion valuations.”
» Meta identifies over 400 malicious Android and iOS apps — in Google and Apple stores — intended to steal Facebook logins, disguised as games, VPNs, photo editors and more
» Visa payments giant is launching crypto debit cards in more than 40 countries, partnering FTX crypto exchange
