What the SolarCoin-Saudi deal Reveals about SolarCoin and China

Recently, a perky startup has begun producing some rather good videos promoting the digital currency SolarCoin. This company is a SolarCoin onboarding service - they help people get involved with the increasingly popular digital currency for solar generators.

SolarLux's funky new video about SolarCoin - the most slick promo video for SolarCoin to date

What is intriguing about this company - SolarLux - is that they are based in one of the world's countries least-suited for solar PV - Hong Kong. 

Hong Kong's towers are both slim and piled full of kit, meaning there's very little roof space for PV; what little ground space there is is mostly National Parks. 

So what are SolarLux up to?

Perhaps the key to this apparent anomaly is not the physical location of the PV that SolarLux hopes to sign up to SolarCoin. Historically Hong Kong is a key route via which western ideas spread into China. Hong Kong is also the place where western cash flows into China, and, more recently, where Chinese cash flows out.

In terms of solar, then, is SolarLux positioning itself to take advantage of the booming solar market that originates in China?

Hauweii's 1GW solar farm  in China's Qinghai province completed in January 2017: worth $2m SolarCoins a year?

Indeed, it turns out that the company involved in the biggest deal to date between a solar operator and SolarCoin - Saudi-based AWCA - have a Chinese partners for their project in Egypt. 

And - far away from Riyadh - SolarLux were involved in the AWCA love-in; the company's website lists AWCA as a 'partner'.

Could it be that the small startup - which positions itself as helping companies integrate SolarCoin - is working to onboard Chinese partners via its Hong Kong base? 

If so we could see some large movements of Chinese solar owners towards SolarCoin over the next few months.

That becomes significant when you look at the market for cryptocurrency in Asia. To date the signup of SolarCoin in Asia has been fairly minimal. And yet cyptocurrency is big - very big - in the East. 

Asia is where digital currencies have really taken off: Japan Yen and South Korea Won have long been the largest currencies that invest in Bitcoin, regularly topping even US Dollars. The majority of the Bitcoin mining network is based in China. 

So mix a solar cryptocurrency with a/ the largest part of the global solar industry (China) and b/ the largest number of global participants in cryptocurrency (China, Japan and South Korea) and you have a heady brew of new drivers for SolarCoin.

We might have the entrepreneurial chaps of SolarLux - from their base in the fashionable Wan Chai area of Hong Kong - to thank for that.