Most Influential 40: President Xi Jinping

This year Bitcoin took a serious hit to its hashrate, the measure of electricity going to secure the distributed network, when the Chinese Communist Party decided to ban cryptocurrency trading, mining and related activities. That had the immediate effect of cutting out about two-thirds of the machines making Bitcoin hum, but the network withstood the assault. Perhaps Chinese President Xi Jingping’s biggest influence on the crypto industry is showing how little sway a nation may have.

Xi is no ordinary CCP head. He has taken moves to distance China from the Western capitalistic enterprise, strengthen the nation’s economy and potentially install himself as a lifelong autocrat. While China has effectively banished a local crypto mining industry, the government has turned to blockchain as one prong of its digital “Belt and Road” global infrastructure endeavor. Further, its experimental digital yuan, a central bank digital currency is already a geopolitical force.

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