China approves 197 blockchain firms, inc. Alibaba, JD.com

E-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com have made it onto China’s cyberspace administration’s first list of registered blockchain service providers.

There are 197 companies in all, with Alibaba and JD.com developing Blockchain-as-a-Service offerings. The regulator says that it will continue its search for other services that should register and “relevant institutions and individuals who have not fulfilled the filing procedures should apply for filing as soon as possible.”

Logistics, government and medical services are the areas that dominate the first list. The authorised companies are not allowed to use blockchain technology for any commercial purpose.

Patents

Last year, Alibaba nabbed the top spot, ahead of IBM, on an iPR Daily list that ranked global organisations by the number of blockchain-related patents they had filed.

The media outlet used data up until 10^th August from across China, the EU, America, Japan and South Korea, and also consulted the International Patent System from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Alibaba filed 90 blockchain-related patent applications and IBM was close behind with 89. In third place was Mastercard (80) followed by Bank of America (53). Next up was People’s Bank of China (PBoC), which filed a total of 44 patent applications around its central bank digital currency project