A look at the last week of crackdowns, including a ruling from Vice Premier Liu He. Hong Kong echoes Beijing with stricter controls of their own, limiting retail investors in the administrative region.
This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.
Normally, this weekly column takes a broad look at all the developments, news, and even gossip from within China. This week, most topics took a backseat to the news that another crackdown had rippled through the industry, threatening to topple markets into a full-blown bear market.
Liu He, who is Vice Premier of China and member of the all-powerful eight-person politburo, led a meeting on preventing and controlling financial risks. Among the decisions was a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading activities, putting a dagger through the heart of anyone hoping to see a more open regulatory environment.
TC.TOP, one of the largest mining pools in the world with a reported 2.5% of the global hashrate, immediately complied by announcing it was closing down operations. That didn’t stop BTC.TOP founder Jiang Zhuo from taking to micro-blogging platform Weibo to announce that Bitcoin was a tool China could use to break up the monopoly of the US dollar in international trade.
China’s role in the mining community had been a major source of distrust between East and West, with some Bitcoiners claiming that China’s possible control of the mining community could threaten the ability of the chain to remain fully decentralized.