emerging industry standards. If we are unable to develop and introduce new products and services or enhancements in a timely manner, or if a release of a new product or service does not achieve market acceptance, our revenues and future prospects may decline.
In addition, changes in the regulatory environment of the PRC and other jurisdictions, which we are unable to influence or predict, may have a materially adverse effect on the fintech and blockchain industries and, therefore, our business and results of operations.
In the PRC, relevant laws and regulations for the fintech industry are tightening, developing and evolving. Since mid-2015, the PRC government and relevant regulatory authorities have issued various laws and regulations governing the marketplace lending industry, which regulate the activities of online lending information intermediaries, online microcredit companies and those who collaborate with these entities in operating marketplace lending platforms. Several laws and regulations issued between 2018 and 2019 have imposed additional requirements and restrictions on the operations of marketplace lending platforms, which have adversely affected and may continue to adversely affect our business and results of operations in the future. The stringent regulatory actions on online lending information intermediaries have decimated online lending information intermediary service, including well-known listed companies such as Yiren Digital (NYSE: YRD) and China Rapid Finance (NYSE: XRF). Since the second half of 2019, several provincial government agencies or internet financing associations have announced their plans to phase out online lending information intermediary business in their jurisdictions, and several provincial government agencies have explicitly announced to clamp down all online lending information intermediary businesses. For the blockchain industry, on March 9, 2021, the governmental authorities in Inner Mongolia, which represents roughly 8% of the world’s total mining power, outright banned bitcoin mining in the region due to the industry’s intense electrical power demands and its negative environmental impacts (both in terms of the waste produced by mining the rare Earth metals used to manufacture miners and the production of electrical power used in bitcoin mining). Several other provinces, including Qinghai and Sichuan, have adopted similar measures that target cryptocurrency mining industry, and the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council vowed to suppress Bitcoin mining and trading in its 51st meeting.
On a global scale, the crypto industry is subject to extensive laws, rules, regulations, policies, orders, determinations, directives, treaties, and legal and regulatory interpretations and guidance including those governing financial services and banking, trust companies, securities, broker-dealers and ATS, commodities, credit, crypto asset custody, exchange, and transfer, cross-border and domestic money and crypto asset transmission, consumer and commercial lending, usury, foreign currency exchange, privacy, data governance, data protection, cybersecurity, fraud detection, payment services (including payment processing and settlement services), consumer protection, escheatment, antitrust and competition, bankruptcy, tax, anti-bribery, economic and trade sanctions, anti-money laundering, and counter-terrorist financing. Many of these legal and regulatory regimes were adopted prior to the advent of the internet, mobile technologies, crypto assets, and related technologies. As a result, they do not contemplate or address unique issues associated with the cryptoeconomy, are subject to significant uncertainty, and vary widely across jurisdictions. These legal and regulatory regimes, including the laws, rules, and regulations thereunder, evolve frequently and may be modified, interpreted, and applied in an inconsistent manner from one jurisdiction to another, and may conflict with one another. Moreover, the complexity and evolving nature of our target business and the significant uncertainty surrounding the regulation of the cryptoeconomy requires us to exercise our judgement as to whether certain laws, rules, and regulations apply to us, and it is possible that governmental bodies and regulators may disagree with our conclusions.
In addition to existing laws and regulations, various governmental and regulatory bodies, including legislative and executive bodies, across various jurisdictions may adopt new laws and regulations, or new interpretations of existing laws and regulations may be issued by such bodies or the judiciary, which may adversely impact the development of the cryptoeconomy as a whole and our legal and regulatory status in particular by changing how we operate our business, how our products and services are regulated, and what products or services we and our competitors can offer, requiring changes to our compliance and risk mitigation measures, imposing new licensing requirements, or imposing a total ban on certain crypto asset transactions, as has occurred in certain jurisdictions in the past. For example, under recommendations from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, and the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, the United States and several foreign jurisdictions are likely to impose the Funds Travel Rule and the Funds