Tribune. The struggle for world supremacy between China and the United States is getting even tougher. China has just declared a cryptocurrency patent war: “The right to issue and control a digital currency will become a battleground between states. “ She does not hide her goal. It is “Breaking the dollar monopoly, which will be the key element in the internationalization of the yuan”. To be taken seriously, she also reveals her weapons, a wallet of “One hundred and thirty patents covering the entire chain of production, issuance and circulation of cryptocurrencies”.
Aggressive on form, it is also tough on substance: accused of stealing from the United States for 600 billion dollars (approximately 515 billion euros) of industrial property per year, China wants to give proof of its inventiveness. Accused of manipulating its currency, it wants to weaken the dollar by preventing its digital version. Sanctioned through its technology companies ZTE and Huaweï, it wants to symmetrically punish Western companies through its patents.
China threatens the heart of the global economy: the Internet of money. As with the preparation of the Internet in the 1990s, the underground effervescence of financial technologies is booming. States became aware of this with the first eruptions of bitcoin, Facebook’s libra and the neobank Revolut, which is already worth half of Société Générale. Barack Obama declared that the United States ” possessed “ Internet. China retorts today and essentially claims to have the Internet of Money.
This is a patent hunter strategy (in English patent troll). This controversial practice consists of amassing patents, opposing them to operators and threatening them with prohibition in order to obtain advantageous compensation. It is the ultimate economic weapon, more dangerous for technological giants than threats of dismantling, taxes or penalties for abuse of a dominant position.
Change of tone
After doubling its international patents by two hundred in twenty years, China became the first applicant in 2019. President Xi Jinping has declared his willingness to acquire “The power to regulate blockchain in the world”. Today the balance of power is favorable to him, with one thousand hundred patents in the Chinese camp, State and champions combined, against six hundred in the American camp.
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