China Prompts Bitcoin Boost

Are China’s Latest Crypto Rankings a Waste of Space?

The Chinese government has just released its second round of cryptocurrency rankings with two new projects listed and a shakeup in the order that doesn’t really add up.

The ratings are based on three primary sets of criteria; the basic level of technology displayed, usefulness of the application, and the innovativeness of the project. The country’s Center for Information Industry Development (CCID), under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, has updated their rankings for the second month now.

China’s Global Public Chain Technology Evaluation Index was officially released on five days at the Shanghai Science Hall. Adding to the 28 original crypto projects this time around was EOS and Nebulas. EOS went straight in at the top, knocking Ethereum down to second spot. This is a surprising decision given the controversy, centralization concerns, and technical glitches that mired its mainnet launch. EOS took one of the biggest hits in the market low yesterday losing over 30% on the week to its lowest price in almost 3 months of just over $7.

The explanation for the CCID’s high regard for EOS came as follows;

“The EOS main network went live on June 10. Although there was an accident such as a short-term suspension, it was highly active in technological innovation, and the software update speed was still one of the new generation public chains that are currently most concerned by the industry,”

The CCID Public Chain Technology Assessment Working Group also altered its assessment structure for the second round of rankings;

“The second-phase assessment model has been optimized compared to the first phase. The security assessment algorithm has been improved and the evaluation indicator for ease of deployment of public-chain nodes has been added.”

Typical factors often used to rank cryptocurrencies such as total supply, market capitalization, and trade volume are not taken into consideration with this assessment. The charts therefore are not indicative of current market conditions or sentiment.

Bitcoin has slid down the list from 13th to 17th despite recovering 4.6% from its annual low yesterday and being the godfather of all other cryptos. Chinese favourite Neo moved up a place to third but it has been battered on the markets losing 64% since the beginning of May. Neo is currently at its lowest level since mid-November, showing little sign of recovery and languishing around $31. Ripple has climbed from 17th to 9th place indicating that centralization issues are also not part of the ranking criteria.

In the grand scheme of things, is a list of rankings from a country that has made every effort to quash crypto trading and mining worth the paper it has been typed on?