Chinese blockchain and crypto trends to watch with Yifan He, Red Date Technology

Interview with Yifan He, Founder and CEO of Red Date Technology by Selva Ozelli Esq, CPA who is an international digital asset legal expert and author of Sustainably Investing in Digital Assets Globally. Her writings are translated into 45 languages and republished in over 200 global publications. She is recognized as an expert media/TV commentator on global digital asset regulation, tax and technology matters.
Yifan He interviewed
Yifan He is the founder and CEO of Red Date Technology, a Hong Kong-based technology firm known primarily as the technical architect behind China's Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) and the UDPN (Universal Digital Payments Network) in the global financial industry
Founded in 2014, Red Date Technology initially focused on "smart city" technology before pivoting to blockchain in 2018. The company is the driving force behind several major global infrastructure projects:
Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN): A state-sanctioned initiative in China aimed at providing a low-cost, unified infrastructure for deploying and managing blockchain applications.
BSN Spartan Network: An international, non-cryptocurrency public chain infrastructure designed for global enterprises to use blockchain technology without regulatory or financial volatility.
Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN): A messaging layer intended to connect different central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), commercial bank tokenized deposits, and stablecoins, similar to a "SWIFT for digital money".
China RealDID: A national-level blockchain-based identity verification system launched in China to manage digital IDs.
Tell us about your educational and professional journey that led you to founding Red Date Technology
My background combines technology, finance, and long-term infrastructure thinking. I studied computer science at SUNY Stony Brook and later completed an MBA at MIT Sloan. I started my first internet company while still in college in the United States, and then spent many years in China working across finance, private equity, and large-scale technology projects.
When I founded Red Date in 2014, the company initially focused on smart city and large-scale digital infrastructure. In 2018, China elevated blockchain to a national strategic priority. Around the same time, I had become convinced that distributed systems would be part of the next generation of public digital infrastructure and the internet, much as cloud computing had become essential to the last generation. That was the moment we moved decisively into blockchain.
Red Date Technology from the beginning has been focused on implementing blockchain infrastructure globally as opposed to selling tokens. Tell us why.
On top of today's internet stack, a new layer will be added specifically to support distributed systems. This new layer will enable multiple-system communications and applications, unlike the traditional layer, which only handles system-to-system bilateral communications.
That is where blockchain has enormous long-term value. The new multi-party IT architecture should apply to all industries, all nations, and all applications. It should not, and will not, be limited to cryptocurrencies. There is a much greater good that this technology can bring to the world.
We identified that the early adoption of the decentralized technologies would come from two main non-cryptocurrency industries: banking/payments and government identities. The value propositions are clear and immediate. That's why five years ago, we began moving into these two industries from just building blockchain infrastructures.
That same logic also explains why Red Date's business is increasingly concentrated around two areas: digital currency infrastructure and identity infrastructure.
Tell us about Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN)
BSN was created to make blockchain deployment more practical and more accessible. The basic idea was simple: blockchain infrastructure should become easier to dep...