When Liu Qiangdong announced that JD.com planned to apply for a stablecoin license globally, intending to reduce the cost of cross-border payments by 90%, many people's first reaction was surprise. This surprise does not stem from JD.com's involvement in fintech, after all, it has a long presence in this field. The real "surprise" is that this statement completely tore off the long-standing "tourist" disguise of the tech giants in the Web3 field, revealing their true ambition to become a "pioneer".
In recent years, we have become accustomed to the "superficial engagement" of tech giants with the concept of Web3. Whether it is the issuance of commemorative NFTs or the establishment of small exploratory funds, these actions mostly remain at the level of marketing or strategic defense, generally interpreted by the outside world as a posture of "can't miss it, but don't take it seriously." They are like cautious tourists, carefully taking photos at the edge of the wild new land of Web3, yet never truly taking off their shoes and socks to step into the mud and cultivate a piece of land that belongs to them.
And Liu Qiangdong's declaration precisely announced the end of this "tourist mentality." It marks an important turning point: at least one top technology giant no longer regards blockchain technology merely as a peripheral business that needs to be "touched upon," but sees it as a scalpel that can fundamentally reshape the underlying architecture of its core business empire. This is no longer about exploring "Web3 business," but about a profound revolution in the "Web3 transformation of business."
The Birth of "JD Coins": An Evolutionary History Born Within a Commercial Empire
To understand why "JD Coin" may succeed, one must first understand that it did not come out of nowhere, but is rather an inevitable product of JD's massive commercial "organism" self-evolving. Its birth is aimed at addressing the deepest pain points JD experiences during its globalization expansion, which in turn forms its most solid foundation.
JD.com's core identity is a supply chain-based technology and service company, and the cornerstone of its business empire is the ultimate control of "business flow, logistics, capital flow, and information flow". Over the years, JD.com has firmly grasped the flow of goods (logistics) and the occurrence of transactions (business flow) through its self-built warehousing and distribution system regardless of cost. However, the "nervous system" of the empire, the flow of funds, especially in complex cross-border settlements, has always been constrained by the external traditional financial system.
Imagine a European brand selling products to China through JD.com, or a Chinese factory supplying to Southeast Asia via JD.com. In this process, the settlement of a payment typically takes 2 to 4 days, and with multiple layers of intermediaries, the costs are high. This is an intolerable bottleneck for JD.com, which pursues extreme efficiency and calculates inventory turnover in terms of "days" or even "hours."
Therefore, "JD Coin" is primarily a "special remedy" born to heal this internal wound. Its primary targets are the tens of thousands of suppliers, brand owners, and partners within the JD global supply chain ecosystem. When JD can use its own stablecoin to provide all participants in this vast "economic entity" with settlement services at nearly zero cost and with a 10-second transaction time, an unprecedented, almost frictionless global trade closed loop is formed. This is not only a saving of costs but also a generational revolution in business models.
This strategy of "self-contained scenarios and internal services" is a wise move by JD.com after learning from the lessons of Meta's (formerly Facebook) Libra project's failure. Libra attempted to create a "super-sovereign currency" aimed at all global consumers in one go, directly challenging the financial sovereignty of various countries, which led to a collective crackdown by global regulators. In contrast, JD.com pragmatically positions stablecoins as an efficiency tool for B2B, being the first to land in a relatively closed and politically sensitive business scenario. This "B-side first, C-side later" penetration path allows JD.com’s ambitions to be wrapped in a highly persuasive business case, thereby gaining valuable growth time under the radar of regulators.
Giants on the Track: How JD Coin Challenges Tether and USDC?
The emergence of "JD Coin" means that it will enter a global stablecoin arena that is already dominated by giants and marked by fierce competition. In this market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, it faces not only regulatory challenges but also significant pressure from the two pioneers, Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC). However, the unique genetics of JD Coin determine that it will participate in the competition in a distinctly different way.
Tether's USDT is currently the "king of the flow" in the market, occupying half of the stablecoin market thanks to its first-mover advantage and deep ties in the cryptocurrency trading market. However, it has long been controversial due to its opaque reserves and ambiguous corporate governance structure, and is viewed by many mainstream financial institutions and regulators as a potential source of systemic risk.
Circle's USDC represents another path – the "path to compliance". It has prioritized transparency and compliance since its inception, with reserves held in trust by top financial institutions such as Bank of New York Mellon, and regular audit reports issued by top accounting firms. This makes USDC a more popular choice for mainstream financial institutions and corporates, and is seen as a compliant bridge between traditional finance and the world of digital assets.
In the face of these two giants, the differentiated advantage of "JD Coin" lies not in financial innovation, but in its unparalleled "foundation in the real economy". The value of USDT and USDC is primarily reflected in financial transactions and payment scenarios in the digital world. In contrast, the value of "JD Coin" is directly anchored to the trade of physical goods worth trillions of dollars flowing within JD's global network.
This is a fundamental difference. Each transaction of "JD Coin" may correspond to a batch of real mobile phones, a box of beauty products from Europe, or a shipment of furniture sent to the United States. This deep binding with the real economy endows it with natural risk resistance and value support. Its demand does not come from speculation or financial arbitrage, but rather from the most genuine trade settlement needs of enterprises. JD does not even need to spend huge sums like other stablecoins to "persuade" users, but can directly "guide" tens of thousands of enterprises within its ecosystem to adopt it through platform rules, payment term discounts, supply chain financial services, and other means.
Therefore, the entry of "JD Coin" will no longer be a homogeneous competition within the stablecoin market, but rather a "dimensionality reduction strike" from the real economy. It will open up a brand new niche market - TradeFi Stablecoin. In this market, the core of competition is no longer about whose financial product is more cleverly designed, but about who can better serve the real needs of global commodity trade. This may force existing players like USDT and USDC to rethink how to align their products more closely with the real economy.
The Global Compliance Maze: The Inevitable Path of JD Coin to Reality
Despite having a strong business vision and ecological advantages, "JD Coin" must successfully navigate a "regulatory maze" composed of complex and fragmented regulations from various countries around the world in order to transform its blueprint into reality. This is not only its biggest challenge but also the key to its success or failure.
JD's choice of Hong Kong as the starting point for its stablecoin plan is a well-considered strategic decision. As an international financial center, Hong Kong has taken a proactive and pragmatic approach to virtual asset regulation in recent years. Its launched "Stablecoin Issuer Sandbox" mechanism provides JD with a valuable testing ground to communicate with top regulatory agencies and explore compliance pathways together. JD's subsidiary "JD Coin Chain Technology" successfully made it into the first batch of the sandbox, which means it has obtained a valuable "entry ticket."
However, Hong Kong is only the starting point. In order to build a truly global payment network, JD.com must overcome the regulatory barriers of the world's major economies one by one. In Europe, it must fully comply with the stringent requirements of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA), which sets bank-like requirements for stablecoin reserves, capital adequacy ratios, and disclosures. In the United States, it will have to deal with evolving federal regulations and find a way through complex political games.
This means that the future "JD Coin" is likely not a single global currency, but rather an alliance composed of multiple "local stablecoins" that are independently registered in different jurisdictions, hold reserves independently, and comply with local laws, such as "JD US Dollar Coin", "JD Euro Coin", and "JD Hong Kong Dollar Coin". They are interconnected in branding and technology, but legally and financially isolated from each other. The legal, compliance, and corporate governance costs required behind this will be astronomical.
The more subtle challenge lies in the fact that, as a technology giant originating from China, JD must prove to regulators in Beijing that its project is a strategic tool serving the "globalization of Chinese enterprises," rather than a potential loophole that threatens national financial security and evades capital controls. It needs to establish an impeccable "firewall," ensuring that its legal entities, fund custody, and anti-money laundering processes are flawless. This communication and game played beneath the table is just as difficult and important as any competition in the open market.
Beyond Speed: When Your Payments Become "Intelligent"
If the only benefits brought by "JD Coin" are faster payment speed and lower costs, its revolutionary potential has yet to be fully unleashed. Its true disruptive power lies in its "programmability"—upgrading currency from a simple symbol of value to an intelligent tool that can embed business logic. This foreshadows a complete reshaping of the global trade finance paradigm that has persisted for centuries.
Imagine a future trade scenario: a factory in China ships goods to JD.com's European overseas warehouse. A smart contract is pre-set, with its execution condition being "when the JD Logistics system's data confirms that this batch of goods has been safely stored." Once the condition is met, the contract will automatically trigger, and the corresponding "JD Euro Coin" payment will be instantly released from JD's digital wallet to the factory in China.
The entire process requires no human intervention, no lengthy audits of letters of credit, invoices, and bills of lading, achieving unprecedented real-time synchronization of logistics, information flow, and capital flow. In this system based on a shared ledger, all parties to the transaction—suppliers, platforms, logistics companies, and even customs—can see the same real, tamper-proof transaction record in real time. This will fundamentally eliminate a large amount of reconciliation, accounting, and dispute resolution back-office costs arising from information asymmetry in traditional trade.
This is no longer an optimization of existing processes, but a rewrite of the global trade underlying "operating system". When payments become intelligent, data becomes the new "oil". By operating this closed-loop platform, JD will gain unparalleled insights into the dynamics of the global supply chain. It will know earlier than anyone else which region is experiencing a surge in demand for a certain product and which shipping route is facing bottlenecks. This data, derived from real transactions, constitutes the most core strategic asset, which can be used for more precise inventory management, supply chain finance, and market forecasting.
Conclusion: Will your wallet make a space for "JD Coin"?
Liu Qiangdong's few words on stablecoins are like a stone thrown into a calm lake, the ripples it creates are far deeper than what is seen on the surface. It reveals the arrival of an era where tech giants are reshaping global business infrastructure through stablecoins.
The core of this transformation is no longer a direct confrontation between technology companies and sovereign nations, but rather a commercial competition centered around "efficiency" and "scenarios." JD.com's ultimate ambition is to leverage its unparalleled physical trade ecosystem to create a global payment layer that is more efficient, smarter, and closer to real commercial needs than any existing financial network.
Its success will depend on whether it can navigate the complex maze of global regulations with ease, and whether it can maximize its advantages of the "real economy" in competition with financial giants such as Tether and USDC. For us ordinary people, this means the emergence of a new choice. Perhaps in the near future, when we make the next cross-border payment, we will find an option called "JD Coin" in addition to traditional bank wire transfers and credit cards. And this is exactly the future that Liu Qiangdong hopes to see.
View Original
The content is for reference only, not a solicitation or offer. No investment, tax, or legal advice provided. See Disclaimer for more risks disclosure.
Liu Qiangdong's ultimate ambition: Your next cross-border payment may require using "JD Coin".
Written by: Luke, Mars Finance
When Liu Qiangdong announced that JD.com planned to apply for a stablecoin license globally, intending to reduce the cost of cross-border payments by 90%, many people's first reaction was surprise. This surprise does not stem from JD.com's involvement in fintech, after all, it has a long presence in this field. The real "surprise" is that this statement completely tore off the long-standing "tourist" disguise of the tech giants in the Web3 field, revealing their true ambition to become a "pioneer".
In recent years, we have become accustomed to the "superficial engagement" of tech giants with the concept of Web3. Whether it is the issuance of commemorative NFTs or the establishment of small exploratory funds, these actions mostly remain at the level of marketing or strategic defense, generally interpreted by the outside world as a posture of "can't miss it, but don't take it seriously." They are like cautious tourists, carefully taking photos at the edge of the wild new land of Web3, yet never truly taking off their shoes and socks to step into the mud and cultivate a piece of land that belongs to them.
And Liu Qiangdong's declaration precisely announced the end of this "tourist mentality." It marks an important turning point: at least one top technology giant no longer regards blockchain technology merely as a peripheral business that needs to be "touched upon," but sees it as a scalpel that can fundamentally reshape the underlying architecture of its core business empire. This is no longer about exploring "Web3 business," but about a profound revolution in the "Web3 transformation of business."
The Birth of "JD Coins": An Evolutionary History Born Within a Commercial Empire
To understand why "JD Coin" may succeed, one must first understand that it did not come out of nowhere, but is rather an inevitable product of JD's massive commercial "organism" self-evolving. Its birth is aimed at addressing the deepest pain points JD experiences during its globalization expansion, which in turn forms its most solid foundation.
JD.com's core identity is a supply chain-based technology and service company, and the cornerstone of its business empire is the ultimate control of "business flow, logistics, capital flow, and information flow". Over the years, JD.com has firmly grasped the flow of goods (logistics) and the occurrence of transactions (business flow) through its self-built warehousing and distribution system regardless of cost. However, the "nervous system" of the empire, the flow of funds, especially in complex cross-border settlements, has always been constrained by the external traditional financial system.
Imagine a European brand selling products to China through JD.com, or a Chinese factory supplying to Southeast Asia via JD.com. In this process, the settlement of a payment typically takes 2 to 4 days, and with multiple layers of intermediaries, the costs are high. This is an intolerable bottleneck for JD.com, which pursues extreme efficiency and calculates inventory turnover in terms of "days" or even "hours."
Therefore, "JD Coin" is primarily a "special remedy" born to heal this internal wound. Its primary targets are the tens of thousands of suppliers, brand owners, and partners within the JD global supply chain ecosystem. When JD can use its own stablecoin to provide all participants in this vast "economic entity" with settlement services at nearly zero cost and with a 10-second transaction time, an unprecedented, almost frictionless global trade closed loop is formed. This is not only a saving of costs but also a generational revolution in business models.
This strategy of "self-contained scenarios and internal services" is a wise move by JD.com after learning from the lessons of Meta's (formerly Facebook) Libra project's failure. Libra attempted to create a "super-sovereign currency" aimed at all global consumers in one go, directly challenging the financial sovereignty of various countries, which led to a collective crackdown by global regulators. In contrast, JD.com pragmatically positions stablecoins as an efficiency tool for B2B, being the first to land in a relatively closed and politically sensitive business scenario. This "B-side first, C-side later" penetration path allows JD.com’s ambitions to be wrapped in a highly persuasive business case, thereby gaining valuable growth time under the radar of regulators.
Giants on the Track: How JD Coin Challenges Tether and USDC?
The emergence of "JD Coin" means that it will enter a global stablecoin arena that is already dominated by giants and marked by fierce competition. In this market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, it faces not only regulatory challenges but also significant pressure from the two pioneers, Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC). However, the unique genetics of JD Coin determine that it will participate in the competition in a distinctly different way.
Tether's USDT is currently the "king of the flow" in the market, occupying half of the stablecoin market thanks to its first-mover advantage and deep ties in the cryptocurrency trading market. However, it has long been controversial due to its opaque reserves and ambiguous corporate governance structure, and is viewed by many mainstream financial institutions and regulators as a potential source of systemic risk.
Circle's USDC represents another path – the "path to compliance". It has prioritized transparency and compliance since its inception, with reserves held in trust by top financial institutions such as Bank of New York Mellon, and regular audit reports issued by top accounting firms. This makes USDC a more popular choice for mainstream financial institutions and corporates, and is seen as a compliant bridge between traditional finance and the world of digital assets.
In the face of these two giants, the differentiated advantage of "JD Coin" lies not in financial innovation, but in its unparalleled "foundation in the real economy". The value of USDT and USDC is primarily reflected in financial transactions and payment scenarios in the digital world. In contrast, the value of "JD Coin" is directly anchored to the trade of physical goods worth trillions of dollars flowing within JD's global network.
This is a fundamental difference. Each transaction of "JD Coin" may correspond to a batch of real mobile phones, a box of beauty products from Europe, or a shipment of furniture sent to the United States. This deep binding with the real economy endows it with natural risk resistance and value support. Its demand does not come from speculation or financial arbitrage, but rather from the most genuine trade settlement needs of enterprises. JD does not even need to spend huge sums like other stablecoins to "persuade" users, but can directly "guide" tens of thousands of enterprises within its ecosystem to adopt it through platform rules, payment term discounts, supply chain financial services, and other means.
Therefore, the entry of "JD Coin" will no longer be a homogeneous competition within the stablecoin market, but rather a "dimensionality reduction strike" from the real economy. It will open up a brand new niche market - TradeFi Stablecoin. In this market, the core of competition is no longer about whose financial product is more cleverly designed, but about who can better serve the real needs of global commodity trade. This may force existing players like USDT and USDC to rethink how to align their products more closely with the real economy.
The Global Compliance Maze: The Inevitable Path of JD Coin to Reality
Despite having a strong business vision and ecological advantages, "JD Coin" must successfully navigate a "regulatory maze" composed of complex and fragmented regulations from various countries around the world in order to transform its blueprint into reality. This is not only its biggest challenge but also the key to its success or failure.
JD's choice of Hong Kong as the starting point for its stablecoin plan is a well-considered strategic decision. As an international financial center, Hong Kong has taken a proactive and pragmatic approach to virtual asset regulation in recent years. Its launched "Stablecoin Issuer Sandbox" mechanism provides JD with a valuable testing ground to communicate with top regulatory agencies and explore compliance pathways together. JD's subsidiary "JD Coin Chain Technology" successfully made it into the first batch of the sandbox, which means it has obtained a valuable "entry ticket."
However, Hong Kong is only the starting point. In order to build a truly global payment network, JD.com must overcome the regulatory barriers of the world's major economies one by one. In Europe, it must fully comply with the stringent requirements of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA), which sets bank-like requirements for stablecoin reserves, capital adequacy ratios, and disclosures. In the United States, it will have to deal with evolving federal regulations and find a way through complex political games.
This means that the future "JD Coin" is likely not a single global currency, but rather an alliance composed of multiple "local stablecoins" that are independently registered in different jurisdictions, hold reserves independently, and comply with local laws, such as "JD US Dollar Coin", "JD Euro Coin", and "JD Hong Kong Dollar Coin". They are interconnected in branding and technology, but legally and financially isolated from each other. The legal, compliance, and corporate governance costs required behind this will be astronomical.
The more subtle challenge lies in the fact that, as a technology giant originating from China, JD must prove to regulators in Beijing that its project is a strategic tool serving the "globalization of Chinese enterprises," rather than a potential loophole that threatens national financial security and evades capital controls. It needs to establish an impeccable "firewall," ensuring that its legal entities, fund custody, and anti-money laundering processes are flawless. This communication and game played beneath the table is just as difficult and important as any competition in the open market.
Beyond Speed: When Your Payments Become "Intelligent"
If the only benefits brought by "JD Coin" are faster payment speed and lower costs, its revolutionary potential has yet to be fully unleashed. Its true disruptive power lies in its "programmability"—upgrading currency from a simple symbol of value to an intelligent tool that can embed business logic. This foreshadows a complete reshaping of the global trade finance paradigm that has persisted for centuries.
Imagine a future trade scenario: a factory in China ships goods to JD.com's European overseas warehouse. A smart contract is pre-set, with its execution condition being "when the JD Logistics system's data confirms that this batch of goods has been safely stored." Once the condition is met, the contract will automatically trigger, and the corresponding "JD Euro Coin" payment will be instantly released from JD's digital wallet to the factory in China.
The entire process requires no human intervention, no lengthy audits of letters of credit, invoices, and bills of lading, achieving unprecedented real-time synchronization of logistics, information flow, and capital flow. In this system based on a shared ledger, all parties to the transaction—suppliers, platforms, logistics companies, and even customs—can see the same real, tamper-proof transaction record in real time. This will fundamentally eliminate a large amount of reconciliation, accounting, and dispute resolution back-office costs arising from information asymmetry in traditional trade.
This is no longer an optimization of existing processes, but a rewrite of the global trade underlying "operating system". When payments become intelligent, data becomes the new "oil". By operating this closed-loop platform, JD will gain unparalleled insights into the dynamics of the global supply chain. It will know earlier than anyone else which region is experiencing a surge in demand for a certain product and which shipping route is facing bottlenecks. This data, derived from real transactions, constitutes the most core strategic asset, which can be used for more precise inventory management, supply chain finance, and market forecasting.
Conclusion: Will your wallet make a space for "JD Coin"?
Liu Qiangdong's few words on stablecoins are like a stone thrown into a calm lake, the ripples it creates are far deeper than what is seen on the surface. It reveals the arrival of an era where tech giants are reshaping global business infrastructure through stablecoins.
The core of this transformation is no longer a direct confrontation between technology companies and sovereign nations, but rather a commercial competition centered around "efficiency" and "scenarios." JD.com's ultimate ambition is to leverage its unparalleled physical trade ecosystem to create a global payment layer that is more efficient, smarter, and closer to real commercial needs than any existing financial network.
Its success will depend on whether it can navigate the complex maze of global regulations with ease, and whether it can maximize its advantages of the "real economy" in competition with financial giants such as Tether and USDC. For us ordinary people, this means the emergence of a new choice. Perhaps in the near future, when we make the next cross-border payment, we will find an option called "JD Coin" in addition to traditional bank wire transfers and credit cards. And this is exactly the future that Liu Qiangdong hopes to see.