China’s ban on BTC is not new. The country has been doing so over the past two years now since the infamous incident of local ICO (initial coin offerings) and crypto exchange happened. Since then, the citizens of the country are allowed to hold the crypto but are restricted from trading it.
This ban on the cryptocurrency naturally affects other companies within the country. Recently, the largest social media platform of the country- WeChat updated its privacy policy. In the new policies, the company has clearly mentioned that any merchant accounts that are found involved in crypto trading will have to face termination by the end of this month.
Recently, Dovey Wan made an announcement on the social media platform- Twitter about the ban. In the post, Wan posted the translation of the newly updated privacy policy.
Urgh, Wechat just updated its payment policy .. merchant can’t serve any token issuance/fund raising or crypto trading activities, otherwise account will be terminated
Given most OTC transactions are happening in wechat, this may impact local liquidity to quite some extent pic.twitter.com/TdNIO6cggS
— Dovey "Rug the fiat" Wan (hiring) (@DoveyWan) May 7, 2019
Advertisement
The messaging and the mobile payment application- WeChat has made it clear that those who will still continue trading cryptos on the platform, according to the new update, will get their accounts terminated by 31st May 2019.
Last year there were reports about the social media platform involved with the country’s government in having a close watch at the activities related to crypto trading. At that time, the parent company of WeChat- Tencent laid a report which consisted of three main actions to be taken to watch crypto trading related activities closely. The action plan included- banning the users from
Using Wechat payment to make crypto transactions, Real-time monitoring of daily transactions, and Risk assessment of any suspicious transactions.
The Tweet from Dovey Wan caught a lot of obvious attention. One of the commentators on the post was the CEO of CZ Binance- Changpeng Zhao. He mentioned that the new age currency- cryptocurrency is “not a bad thing.” Last year he mentioned in one of his tweets that the social media company might “probably reverse its decision.” In a separate tweet, the CEO suggested to the readers that they should not worry. He tried to bring out an optimistic viewpoint of the situation. He went philosophical when he said that at times, the news that appears to be a “bad news” often pan out to be “positive in the long term.” He ended his tweet with a Chinese quote-
[…] Chinese have a proverb for this. New (often better) opportunities always emerge during times of change.
China’s relationship with crypto mining-
Advertisement
The crypto mining industry, too has been facing limitations in the country. For instance, last year in February the govt. of the country made the Chinese crypto miners go for an “orderly exit.” The reasons given were based on issues related to tax and environmental hazards of crypto mining. On another front, China’s Internet Financial Risks Remediation asked the local authorities to make crypto miners to close their business. This repression made many crypto players to either completely quit the arena or to forcibly switch to other options such as artificial intelligence in the search for a business alternative.
