Asia's tech news: July 14th
A snapshot of recent tech news headlines from across the broad Asia-Pacific.
An at-a-glance, bullet-pointed outline of Asia’s tech news headlines in the simplest possible format: headlines + links. Quick-reference news for a time-poor readership.
In this issue:
Korea Blockchain Week 2022 is set for August 7-14, looking at all things Web3, crypto, nonfungible tokens and beyond (link)
Crypto hits a new low: "...Bitstamp plans to charge a monthly 'inactivity fee'...on accounts that haven’t traded, deposited, withdrawn or staked assets for a year..." (link)
China: Internet regulator amps up crackdown on online scams, removing 42,000 counterfeit financial service apps and adding to fraud blacklist of 3.8M sites and 514,000 apps (link)
Vietnam: Azota education-tech raises $2.4 pre-A funding with platform allowing teachers to create and grade tests, with real-time exam proctoring and student performance tracking (link)
Hong Kong: StartmeupHK Festival 2022 is set for September 5-10 - prop-tech, the metaverse, smart cities, healthcare and more to be covered (link)
North Korea believed to be behind recent strain of ransomware cyberattacks on US hospitals and other health care facilities (link)
Indonesia: Juragan Material raises $4M in seed funding with B2B construction-focused marketplace, already boasting more than 9000 SKUs and over 180 brands (link)
India: Iron Pillar reportedly raising $400M fund to boost Indian tech startups and scale-ups (link)
Malaysia: Huawei Spark Accelerator 2022 competition launches, aiming to identify, incubate, accelerate and boost the innovation of Malaysia's startups and deep tech firms (link)
Indonesia: Pina personal finance app raises $3M seed funding, in part from Y Combinator, allowing users to monitor assets and invest in stock or mutual fund products (link)
China: Tencent begins testing NFT avatars for use in QQ music app, minus ability to trade NFTs due to government regulations around speculation (link)
Tech and the future of fashion: "...from AR/VR dressing rooms to temperature-changing smart fabrics to virtual goods in the metaverse..." (link)
The dangers of social media for children: "Lalani was eight years old...and did not appreciate or understand the dangerous nature of what TikTok was encouraging her to do." (link)
China: An overview of the increasing, and often undefined, restrictions on content, behaviour and even dress being placed on the country's livestreamers, leading to bans and self-censorship (link)
India: Vegrow B2B marketplace for fruit raised $25M Series B, connecting more than 20K farmers with aggregated wholesalers and traders in more than 100 cities (link)
India: 26% of Indian adults currently have a digital-only bank account, up from 22% in 2020, with digital banking adoption set to hit 39% by 2023 and 46% by 2027 (link)
Indonesia: Kini on-demand payroll provider raised $4.3M seed funding with earned wage access, bill-paying services, micro insurance and more in the pipeline https://t.co/lbdEdvD9Gu
Former head of TikTok gaming rolls out blockchain gaming startup, MetaO, aiming to provide users with multiple blockchains (link)
Philippines: Investree crowdfunding platform launches '2gether Towards the Future' campaign to help the country's SMEs, looking to expand Dept of Trade & Industry partnership (link)
India: Finvu AA raises $2.5M with consent-based financial account aggregation, the first non-banking financial company account aggregator to gain a license from the Reserve Bank (link)
Japan/Singapore: Oasys gaming blockchain builder raises $20M via private token sale, with sights on eventual move to becoming a DAO, decentralized autonomous organization (link)
Australia: InternMatch secures Au$10M Series A, providing students and career changers with worldwide options on professional internships, training and mentoring (link)
The case for NFTs in music: "...the streaming system is also highly extractive for artists. Spotify, for example, only pays $0.003 per stream..." (link)
Hong Kong's Animoca Brands completes phase 2 of $75.3M funding round, with sights on the 'open metaverse' and digital property rights for online users (link)
China: TikTok parent firm ByteDance to launch Kesong social media app, stepping up competition with Xiaohongshu social e-commerce rival (link)
Confronting Reality in Cyberspace - Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet, online now from the Council on Foreign Relations: "The era of the global internet is over." (link)
Twitter and free speech vs Indian gov't: "...whether, when an unjust law unjustly applied makes it all but impossible for a company to protect speech, the judiciary will step in to protect it." (link)
And in case you missed it…
Headlines and useful reference points in tech news from the wider world.
Mojo Vision unveils prototype of smart contact lens, capable of showing basic information like driving directions using only eye movements to control the display (link)
Download: 'The state of industrial security in 2022' - "...more than 90% of organizations surveyed acknowledged experiencing a security incident in the last 12 months." (link)
France to build major microchip facility, boosting capacity from 10,000 to 22,000 wafers per week, partly in EU move to minimize China supply exposure (link)
Croatia's Revuto to offer lifetime digital subscriptions for Netflix, Spotify via NFTs, limited to a total of 10K users and seeing a secondary NFT trading market (link)
"Google seems to have decided the problem is that it filters too much spam...the solution is to let politicians run wild with polling updates, merch solicitations, and frantic fundraising pleas." (link)
New UK legislation will require social media firms, video stream services and search engines to minimise exposure to foreign state-backed disinformation (link)
Meta to retire Novi digital wallet in September, ending its cryptocurrency project, and believed to be in preparation for a worsening of the crypto downturn (link)
Apple to launch 'lockdown mode' digital security for its devices to in bid to protect users targeted by hacking attacks and spyware (link)
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