January 23,2018- Ma Huateng (better known as Pony Ma) , the chairman of China’s technology titan Tencent Holdings, gave his opinion on digital currency and its underlying technology blockchain on January 22.

“Currently ,numerous public blockchains (bitcoin, for example) have consumed a massive amount of energy to ‘mine’ virtual currencies. Does this mean they are endorsed by any equivalents? According to the life theory, many living systems will evolve and then be eliminated over the time.”

Ma’s comment which was posted on his Wechat Moments was a respond to a famous physicist  Shou-Cheng Zhang’s latest article on blockchain.

As a tenured professor in the Department of Physics at Stanford, Prof. Zhang is well-known for his work on topological insulator. Despite all his fame in academia, this physicist also shows keen interest in cutting-edge technologies, such as cyptocurrency and blockchain.

Prof. Zhang used a very profound concept in physics called Increase of Entropy to shed light on blockchain in his article. He said blockchain consensus was a bit like the living system as its own entropy decreased to reach consensus, while increasing the entropy of the surrounding system . This was a cost. But compared to other systems, the cost of blockchain system was very small.

He added that just as TCP/IP and Packet Switching were able to defeat giants like American Telephone & Telegraph(AT & T), blockchain had the power to usher in an era of decentralized network. A long-lasting reunion is always followed by a split. The way of communication between persons could be back to P2P through blockchain. More amazingly, people can exchange value on the blockchain platform.

He pointed out his greatest wish was to make the society even better by means of blockchain, and to create and achieve value by sharing date.In this way ,the society could become more fair and everyone could enjoy more new opportunities.

Mr. Ma thought Prof. Zhang’s introduction of blockchain from the angle of physics and comparing the technology to living system was very interesting.Although the Chinese tech billionaire behind Tencent questioned the value of virtual currencies, the firm—-a creator of many popular social services such as QQ and Wechat—-has tapped into the blockchain space, and published a white paper on it. Tencent is exploring the applications of blockchain core technologies , including digital assets and smart contracts,in diversified scenes, like Robo-Advisor, flight delay claims, intellectual property protection.