China's Bitcoin Ban Has Been Ineffective: At Least $17Bn Transferred by Chinese Nationals Last Year
Nineteen months after China banned Bitcoin and crypto trading, more signs have emerged that its citizens continue to participate in digital markets.
- "US bankruptcy filings for FTX, which collapsed in November last year, show Chinese users accounted for 8% of the exchange’s customers," writes BNN Bloomberg.
- “Essentially, bans don’t work,” said Caroline Malcolm, Global Head of Public Policy at surveillance firm Chainalysis.
“The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies and the fact that they can be transferred peer-to-peer and traded on global exchanges make it difficult for any government to completely eliminate them,” she added.
- "The ban has either been ineffective or loosely enforced. The average monthly value of crypto flowing to China did roughly halve in 2022 from a year earlier but still remained sizable at $17 billion," Chainalysis estimates.
- "Theoretically, crypto trading is outlawed for Chinese at home and abroad but it’s “hard to enforce,” Jack Ding, a partner with crypto regulations specialist Duan & Duan Law Firm said. Often it’s about compliance systems at exchanges and whether they’ll filter out Chinese passport holders, he added."
- "Since the prohibition, Chinese regulators haven’t announced sanctions on any offshore exchange for signing up mainland users."
