Blockchain Pioneer Jack Ma Announces He Is Downshifting

ICOBox head of International PR Dima Zaitsev on one of the world's great entrepreneurs changing career

Jack Ma, the boss of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has announced he is stepping down next year. Mr. Ma is one of China's richest men and his Alibaba is one of the world's most valuable companies, with its shares nearly doubling in value last year alone. Mr. Ma co-founded Alibaba in 1999 and now has a personal net worth of $36.6bn.

"The world is big, and I am still young, so I want to try new things," Mr. Ma commented, adding that he plans to return to teaching and focus on philanthropy.

Mr. Ma follows in the footsteps of Bill Gates, who famously left Microsoft for focus on his own charitable Foundation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has attracted multi-billion dollar support from Warren Buffett and is said to have inspired a new generation of philanthropists such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

Under Mr. Ma's leadership, Alibaba alone filed more than 10% of all blockchain patents worldwide last year. Of the just over 400 blockchain patents issued in 2017, Alibaba filed 43. That companies with such stratospheric growth rates are leading the way in distributed ledger technology development shows that the world's top entrepreneurs are true crypto-optimists. Chinese President Xi Jinping has described blockchain technology as "substantially reshaping the global economic structure." However, the recent moves on the local level in China have been criticised as potentially holding back fintech regulation.