Alibaba has announced a new company chair who is crypto-friendly. Joe Tsai, the soon-to-be former executive vice chair of Alibaba, will replace Daniel Zhang as company chair. Tsai has backed several crypto projects through his wealth manager and tweeted that he “like[s] crypto” in December 2021. Tsai’s wealth manager Blue Pool Capital has invested in several crypto firms including FTX, Polygon’s $450-million funding round in February, and Web3 firm Artifact Labs.
Eddie Yongming Wu will follow Zhang as Alibaba CEO as well as replace him on the company’s board of directors. China has had a mixed relationship with crypto and blockchain. The country was infamous for cracking down on mining firms in 2021 prompting an exodus of companies to other jurisdictions, but also has been pushing trials of a digital yuan through the People’s Bank of China. Alibaba started an NFT marketplace copyright trading in 2021 as well as an NFT solution under its cloud business unit. However, the latter was deleted without explanation shortly following its launch.