China’s Crypto Clampdown Tightens As Alipay Weigh In

The latter end of this week has seen a number of different movements happen within China that are all pointing towards a complete ban of cryptocurrencies and any blockchain related activities in the country. As it stands, cryptocurrency is illegal in some aspects, but now it seems that authorities are doing everything in their power to make crypto trading, investment and education as difficult as possible. Here’s a quick recap from our recent coverage of this story

“Authorities have made efforts to ban WeChat accounts that are sharing cryptocurrency and blockchain news. WeChat is a Chinese social media, one that can be used to advertise cryptocurrency and can be used by media outlets to push crypto news. As of yesterday, a number of large companies were banned from WeChat, and authorities published guidelines that stipulate cryptocurrency and blockchain related news will no longer be allowed on the social media platform.”

Furthermore:

“Authorities in Beijing are alleged to have banned hotels and venues from hosting cryptocurrency and blockchain related conferences and events. As you know, such events are a big deal within the corporate crypto world and networking is a great way for crypto projects to grow. Now it seems that authorities are going to stop these events happening, in order to divert cryptocurrency attention away from the general public.”

Most recently:

“Authorities are alleged to blocking its citizens from accessing around 124 cryptocurrency exchanges online. This, is a clear move to make trading and investing almost impossible in China.”

This all comes after the China National Fintech Risk Rectification Office said:

“Some organizations or individuals use the blockchain and virtual currency as the gimmicks to carry out illegal criminal activities such as pyramid schemes and fraud… The relevant departments will further adopt targeted clean-up measures to maintain financial order and social stability. The 124 websites are located outside the country, but the virtual currency trading platform website that provides transaction services for domestic residents has taken necessary control measures. The next step will be to strengthen monitoring and block in real time.”

What’s happening now? The latest addition to this story, according to a report from a Beijing News source, Alipay, a branch of Chinese giants Alibaba, will now be monitoring the movements and transactions of its users in order to stamp out cryptocurrency trading. The report by BJNews states:

"All along, Alipay will refuse services to merchants involved in virtual currency transactions. For personal accounts suspected of virtual currency transactions, depending on the circumstances, we will take measures to limit account withdrawals or even permanently limit withdrawals," a company representative told Beijing News.”

Not only will Alipay be monitoring the actions of their customers to ensure that no customers are engaging in cryptocurrency related activities, they will also be making efforts to try and educate their users on the problems of cryptocurrencies (in their opinion) and are going to be referring to crypto news as propaganda that should be avoided at all costs. This is a very big deal. Its censorship and it’s a part of what seems to be a bigger national censorship against cryptocurrency in the country. Since there’s been so many moves against cryptocurrencies in China in the past two days alone, we can only expect this to continue through the rest of the month. As a matter of fact, we can only expect that by the end of the month, Chinese authorities may even have rolled out a total ban on cryptocurrencies. It’s not what we want, but it’s what we should now start to expect. Whilst global adoption is driving through the rest of the world, it’s very clear that this is something China do no want to be a part of. References BJNews