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.

China's Bitcoin Ban Has Been Ineffective: At Least $17Bn Transferred by Chinese Nationals Last Year
  • "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."

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