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. This week, following a tumultuous few weeks of regulation, the Bitcoin world’s focus shifted to Miami and Latin America. Searches for Bitcoin on China’s most popular social media app WeChat stabilized between 1 million and 3 million per day, a stark difference from the peaks of over 10 million that were seen in late May. Weibo and Baidu half pulls the plug Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, restricted …
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. China regulations — Fact or FUD? 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 of another crackdown that had rippled through the industry, threatening to topple markets into a full-blown bear market. Abandoning the mines It was all fun and games until a ruling came down from …
China has ramped up efforts to quash cryptocurrency mining in its Inner Mongolia region by introducing new penalties for those caught engaging in the illegal activity. Officials unveiled new draft rules that would see harsher punishments applied to those caught mining Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, per a report by the South China Morning Post. These would include placing offenders on a social credit blacklist, which would stop them from getting loans or even using the transportation system. The new rules make particular mention of data centers, industrial parks, telecoms companies, internet firms and even cybercafes, noting that any such …
Bitcoin’s (BTC) general downtrend continued on Monday morning despite the coin showing a strong 17% rebound overnight. As the coin continues to nurse wounds from its recent 43% price drop from an all-time high, more turbulence could yet be in store for Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market. Several large Bitcoin miners opted to cease operations in China this past weekend following the news that Chinese authorities were planning a crackdown on cryptocurrency mining. By Monday morning, three Bitcoin mining pools had announced plans to halt activities in China. BTC.TOP, which accounted for as much as 2.5% of the overall …
Bitcoin’s reliance on large-scale mining infrastructure and geographic concentration has been thrown into sharp relief by China’s recent mining crackdown. In May, China announced that it would be getting tough on crypto mining and trading as a response to financial risks. The nation’s crackdown on crypto is not new, rather it's a reiteration of previous standings on the risks of digital currency to economic stability, in response to recent price fluctuations. For the first time, cryptocurrency miners are being targeted to enforce the existing guidelines. Mining hardware still presents a potential risk, even if mining moves to other locations. This …