Much ado about the hyped technology

Like me, my peers who attended university around 2010 fondly remember Renren, a Chinese social networking website in the mold of Facebook. Back then, if you were a student in China but not on Renren, you didn't exist. And then ... well, WeChat - shall we say - stole Renren's thunder. But I'm not here to reminisce.

Toward the end of 2017, Renren, unfazed by WeChat's dominance, made a bold move. Using blockchain technology, it issued its own cybercurrency RRcoin in the form of private equity or PE in China. Following the move, shares of Renren surged 76 percent to $12.99 on Jan 5, 2018 on the New York Stock Exchange.

But, in September 2017, China had banned initial coin offerings or ICOs, which meant any ICO-related activity, even that which was masked as "PE", would not be legal. It is believed Renren took the message and quickly called off its PE project.