The relationship between Bitcoin and China has been very unpredictable. The government of China loves their power and on the other hand, the Bitcoin enthusiast loves its Independence.
A partial ban on bitcoin by China in September 2017
The year 2017, for the cryptocurrencies in China, prove to be somewhat liberal until a series of a ban was imposed on various fields in the cryptocurrency within a duration of few months. This concluded in some way that are cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum and many other had little space in the borders of China. That point of time the people of China had little hope for the lift of ban from them because the government had promised for increased Innovation and research in the field of blockchain Technology with Bitcoin being at the center however it was speculated that the other coins would be banned except Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin brewed troubles in the month of February when the central bank of the country decided to ban all the withdrawals related to cryptocurrencies in order to stop the illegal funding until the employees were known and verified. Which resulted in the Global market trading share of cryptocurrencies from China reducing from more than 90% to almost 10%.
The complete ban on bitcoin by China in 2018
During the initial few months of 2018, many entrepreneurs and Businessmen had already made adjustments with respect to the ban and we’re looking forward to international Investments. They still were very optimistic that the government would be lifting the ban from the cryptocurrencies. However, there were also speculations from a few experts that the country might experience a complete ban on it by all means. It was even predicted that the country might restrict the access to the websites, both domestic as well as international which assists in the crypto trading, through its firewall.
But it was until in February when the financial regulator of the country released an official statement and completely banning all kinds of cryptocurrency trading in the country. According to reports the financial regulator of the country was not completely satisfied with the current restriction on the domestic exchanges and ICOs and hence they went a step further to ban the international services too.
Ban on Bitcoin in Beijing
A tougher decision was taken in Beijing which banned completely, all kinds of crypto-related activities. Following which the advertisements related to the cryptocurrencies were witnessed to be removed from the domestic social media website, Weibo along with the most popular search engine of China, Baidu.
Cryptocurrency mining in China
Amidst all these controversies from the cryptocurrency mining statistics of China doesn’t seem to have collapsed. The country is still one of the leading nations in the number of cryptocurrency miners around the world. This is evident from the initiation of a cryptocurrency mining firm by one of the biggest companies in China, the Alibaba group, despite toughening the regulations on the crypto in the nation.
The cryptocurrencies are still in the nascent versions and the decisions made by the countries like China which is considered to be the world’s second-biggest economy, influence other countries also to develop a viewpoint related to the cryptocurrencies. After all South Korea was heavily influenced by the cryptocurrency ban back in the September 2017 and even it followed the footsteps of China banning the cryptocurrency in its country as well. Any particular technology for that matter experiences a lot of reluctance from major economies because the financial regulators of those Countries fear that they might lose their position and their economy would be shattered.
Does China hate Bitcoin?
Currently, China has taken a very serious decision by banning all kinds of cryptocurrency related activities both domestic as well as International. In future, the ban would be lifted or not would be a very difficult question to be answered.
The financial regulators of China where quoted saying that the earlier ban in the September 2017 on initial coin offerings for domestic trading was not enough since the people were moving on to the international investments and hence prevailing the financial risk for the nation. However, the decision related to the cryptocurrency mining still remains unanswered. It is to be understood that the country is very keen in protecting the interest of its people by only banning the financial part of the blockchain technology which is the cryptocurrencies but the actual blockchain technology is not banned in the country, in fact, on the other hand, it is under an extensive research to discover its potential.
