”Facebook of China” Renren to Stage ICO

Renren, the first generation of Chinese social media, has announced its plan to start an ICO project called RR Coin. In reaction to the news, its shares spiked 13.57%.

Also Read: From Mansions to Prisons: Bitcoin and Real-Estate Doesn’t Mix So Well

From Renren to RR Coin

Launched in December 2005, Renren has been dubbed “The Facebook of China” with its Facebook-like features and its popularity among students in the early years. It represents one of the most important and successful “real-name registration” SNS companies in China.

Over the years Renren has seen rise of new players such as microblog platform Sina Weibo and Tencent’s mobile app Wechat. Unlike the two blooming products, Renren is losing traction in appealing to the new masses of Chinese Netizens. The only solution is constant product innovation. And the social company decided to turn its strategic attention to the blockchain industry.

According to the whitepaper released by Renren, they will develop a blockchain-based open source platform that can record user interactions and trading behavior. And the token RR Coin will be used in multiple scenarios from rewarding users who contribute content to charging for advertising.

RR Coin has 1 billion coins in total, among which 40% will be used for ICO sale, 25% for the RR Coin Foundation, 15% will be given to the team for marketing and development and the remaining 20% for business expansion. “The project is going to raise 100,000 ETH,” said a Beijing-based ICO investor. “I think it’s highly overvalued. RR Coin is more like QQ coin of Tencent that is totally centralized. They are just selling a new concept to make users active again.” But it seems that new concepts work. Renren’s stock (NYSE: RENN) spiked around 19% in reaction to the news.

 Companies Continue Rebirth in Blockchain

In just a few months, China’s top dot-com companies are all making blockchain a powerful new solution across their businesses.

The fifteen-year old Xunlei Networking Techinologies（NASDAQ: XNET）started a new service that is completely divorced from its fundamentals. The company launched “Wanke coin mining” cryptocurrency project on October 12th, and its stock went from less than $5 per share to nearly $25 per share, and continued to witness a 475% gain in less than two months.

Qihoo 360, a leading antivirus software provider recently went all-in with its futures plans for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. On December 20th, the company launched a blockchain research center to explore how the technology can be used to improve financial services. The President of 360 Finance noted: “The research center will create a mode of ‘Blockchain Plus Finance’ that integrates distributed ledger with smart contracts,  asymmetric encryption and consensus mechanisms.”

Then on Decemberr 29th, it launched a brand new website covering cryptocurrency news and price analysis. The website consists of a live cryptocurrency price chart, detailing trading volume and price change over the past 24 hours, which resembles that of coinmarketcap. At the bottom of the web page, it notes that the website copyright belongs to 360 Internet Security Center. However the website has been inaccessible since January 2nd.

Do you think these top Internet giants will pose a threat to small-sized blockchain startups? Leave your comments below.

Images via Shutterstock, RenRen.com

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