China blocks several cryptocurrency-related social media accounts

China has cracked down upon a series of cryptocurrency-related accounts on China's Twitter-variant Weibo.

Under the crackdown, institutions must not offer clients any service involving cryptocurrency, including registration, trading, clearing and settlement. 

However, China is yet to bar individuals from holding cryptocurrencies.

China has banned financial institutions and payment gateways from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions and warned investors against arbitrary crypto trading as per a statement by the three industry bodies.

The three industry bodies include the National Internet Finance Association of China, the Payment and Clearing Association of China and the China Banking Association.

The statement noted that cryptocurrency prices recently skyrocketed and then plummeted. 

"Speculative trading of cryptocurrency has seriously infringed on the safety of people's property and disrupted the normal economic and financial order," the statement said.

It also highlighted the risks of cryptocurrency trading, stating that virtual currencies were not supported by real value and that their prices can be easily manipulated.

China shut down local cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017, which accounted for 90 per cent of the global bitcoin trading.

The People's Bank of China, in June 2019, said it would block access to all domestic and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and websites, aiming to clamp down on all cryptocurrency trading.

Reacting to the Chinese government tough measures, NYU Law School adjunct professor Winston Ma said that the crackdown was a message from Beijing that it will not allow a Chinese version of (Tesla CEO) Elon Musk in the Chinese crypto market.

Ma, the author of the book 'The Digital War', expects China's Supreme Court to publish a judicial interpretation soon that may link crypto-mining and trading businesses with China's body of criminal law.

Other experts noted that such an interpretation would address the legal ambiguity that has failed to clearly identify bitcoin trading establishments as 'illegal operations'. 

The Weibo freeze comes even as the Chinese media stepped up reportage against crypto-trading. The official news agency Xinhua recently published articles that exposed a series of crypto-related scams. The stepped-up crackdown also comes as China's central bank is accelerating the testing of its own digital currency.

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• China
• cryptocurrency
• Chinese crackdown
• Crypto-trading
• Digital currency