Alibaba

Alibaba is an e-commerce, retail, AI, data, and technology company based in Hangzhou, China.
Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Yung Tsai and Jack Ma. It is one of the top-performing retail businesses in China. While the company is similar in many ways to Amazon.com, Alibaba often outperforms Amazon on the international market. 
=== Cryptocurrency ===
Although Alibaba and TRON (TRX) currently have no official affiliation, certain notable individuals on the TRON team, including TRON's creator Justin Sun, are known to have prior relationships with Alibaba. Justin Sun allegedly has a long-standing personal relationship with Alibaba's current CEO and co-founder, Jack Ma. Sun was the first millennial graduate of Hupan University, an educational institution founded by Ma. He also describes himself as Jack Ma's "protégé" on his Linkedin page. Additionally, Alibaba's former chief data mining expert Zhao Hong joined the TRON team in late 2017. 
Alibaba requested a preliminary injunction in a U.S. court to block the Dubai cryptocurrency firm Alibabacoin Foundation from using the name "Alibaba," claiming that use of the name caused it and its consumers damages related to mistaken affiliation with the cryptocurrency "Alibabacoin." A New York judge threw the request out, saying Alibaba did not show the court had jurisdiction, as it had failed to establish reasonable probability that Alibabacoin's websites were used to conduct business in New York, and that any damages that may have happened as a result of brand confusion likely happened in China, not the U.S.
=== Blockchain ===
Alibaba has been publicly engaged with blockchain-inspired projects since 2016. Recently, the company unveiled a blockchain project to help prevent food fraud.
On October 4, 2018, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published the patent application submitted by Alibaba for a blockchain-based transaction system. The project, currently titled "BLOCKCHAIN-BASED TRANSACTION PROCESSING METHOD AND APPARATUS," was originally submitted in March of 2017, though it wasn't filed until March 2018. The application describes a system in which smart contracts are used to carry out efficient administrative intervention, or rule enforcement by "a government agency or a trustful institution," against accounts associated with illegal activity. Currently, such an operation is supported by existing, widely-adopted blockchain platforms without restricting other users' transactions as well.
In April 2020, Alibaba's fintech arm, Ant Financial, launched "OpenChain," a blockchain platform designed to help small and medium-sized companies deploy blockchain applications more efficiently.
=== Allegations of Sexism ===
Alibaba is among several Chinese companies that have been criticized for discriminatory and misogynistic hiring practices. It has released ads aimed at recruiting programmers in the past that featured attractive female actors talking about how their ideal man knows how to code. Other reports revealing requirements for female employees based on physical appearance have been released as well.
== References ==
Category:fintech
Category:digital assets
Category:decentralized applications
Category:distributed ledgers
Category:definitions
Category:cryptocurrency
Category:CryptoMarketsWiki