Cryptocurrency update: China’s crypto clampdown intensifies

Beijing announces some of the toughest measures against cryptocurrency to date.

Cryptocurrency update

China announces harshest anti-crypto measures yet

Bitcoin was rocked on Friday by a big right hook delivered by the People’s Bank of China.

China’s central bank has ruled that all cryptocurrency transactions made in the country, and all those coming from overseas made by domestic Chinese citizens, are illegal.

Naturally, this caused a landslide in BTC prices. The coin dropped over 8% on the day – although it has since clawed back some of those losses and is trading into the green as of Monday 27th September.

This is the harshest and most blatant anti-crypto measure undertaken by China to date.

Beijing’s official stance is that cryptocurrency is a) illegitimate, b) an environmental disaster, and c) something it cannot control completely. Freeing finances from government oversight is the entire point of decentralised finance (DeFi) after all. In a country as centralised as China, that’s a no-go.

From here on out, it’s pretty much a given that Chinese measures against crypto will get even tighter.

The POBC has said monitoring will step up to stop banks handling any crypto-related transactions. Bank bitcoin transactions were ruled out by China as early as 2013, so really this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Authorities will now seek to eradicate mining operations entirely. Recently, over 10,000 mining rigs were seized in Inner Mongolia, one of the busiest regions for cryptocurrency mining in China, as the nation steps up its efforts.

This could have major consequences for global Bitcoin supplies. The hash rate slowed dramatically when the last wave of Chinese anti-mining operations went into overdrive back in June. Expect more of the same – although that could benefit prices (scarce supply + high demand = profit?).

Now it’s a scramble from international exchanges to drop Chinese customers.

Huobi and Binance, two of china’s biggest exchanges, has stopped registrations for new Chinese clients. Wallet supplier TokenPocket has also said it will be winding up services for mainland Chinese customers and would willingly embrace regulation.

Twitter rolls out Bitcoin tipping

The rest of this article will look at those who feel more positively about crypto. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is certainly one of them.

It was announced last week that Twitter will now start accepting tips in the form of Bitcoin payments. That’s right: if you like a tweet you can show your appreciation by sending the original poster a little chunk of cryptocurrency for their troubles.

Twitter has turned to Lightning to enable Bitcoin integration. The feature is currently available for iOS users only. Android Twitter browsers will support it soon, according to Dorsey, but the launch date is yet to be revealed.

Clicking on the feature enables users to tip creators through third-party services like CashApp, which is operated by Square, Jack Dorsey’s payment platform.

There is also talk of Twitter going in hard on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – a new digital way to present and own media.

These digital assets — often JPEG artwork — have exploded in popularity and are often used as profile pictures. Twitter is working on a solution to authenticate whether a user actually owns said JPEG.

This could give NFTs a fresh sheen of legitimacy.

Either way, it’s very clear that Jack Dorsey is a big crypto fan. It might also be helping crypto prices in general. On Friday, following the POBC statement, the market was a sea of red. Now, it’s much more balanced with key tokens back in the green.

That’s the power of social media for you.

Cardona to pump $100m into DeFi

While China has made its stance on decentralised finance abundantly clear, there are others who are convinced it is the future.

Emurgo, the investment wing of the Cardano network, which uses the coin of the same name, has pledged to invest $100m into developing DeFi.

The announcement was made by Emurgo CEO Ken Kodama at the 2021 Cardano Summit – an annual conference dedicated to everything involving the world’s fourth-largest blockchain.

Kodama said this major investment would accelerate the development of the Cardano ecosystem.

Emurgo’s plan seems to cover all bases, seeking to boost blockchain education, NFT solutions, and pioneer DeFi as a whole.

This isn’t the only thing Emurgo plans to invest in. At Sunday’s Summit, the company announced it also plans to pump more funding into African artificial intelligence, blockchain, and smart technologies firm Adanian Labs.

As well as being a blockchain network, Cardano is also one of the world’s foremost altcoins (i.e., a token that is not Bitcoin). Despite this big announcement, the token was in the red. Cardano had fallen 2.5% in trading on Monday morning.