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Weibo suspends accounts of Binance and Tron amid fresh crackdown of crypto businesses in China

Tue, 19 Nov 2019, 12:04 pm UTC

Amid report of a fresh crackdown on cryptocurrency trading activities in China, the official accounts of Binance and Tron have been banned on Weibo, the country’s largest micro-blogging website, last week, Bloomberg reported.

The latest crackdown comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aggressive push for blockchain adoption. The endorsement for the technology by the CCP leader led to renewed interest in crypto markets.

While Chinese state-run media recently called Bitcoin as “the first successful application of blockchain technology,” they have also cautioned against the frenzy.

Last week, the Shanghai branch of the People’s Bank of China and the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau jointly issued a notice targeting companies engaged in the area of cryptocurrencies to exit such business immediately. Citing a report from Caixin, The Block reported that the two agencies ordered local administrative offices to look into cryptocurrency-related activities in the city and finish the inspection by November 22.

No explanations given

A Binance spokeswoman told Bloomberg that Weibo did not give a reason for suspending the exchange’s account last Wednesday. She added that the account was suspended before the regulators issued the notice, adding that they are appealing the decision.

Tron founder Justin Sun, on the other hand, believes that the suspension of the account is not related to the notice. He told Bloomberg that they are also working to get the account up and running.

Binance’s expansion plans in China

Recently, Binance started hosting over-the-counter (OTC) yuan trading. In a Twitter video late last month, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that the exchange is seeing rising trading volumes from Chinese users, particularly following the launch of the peer-to-peer functionally, available only for iOS users.

“We can expect more things to happen from China,” Zhao said, adding that a lot of blockchain projects have become much more active in the country now. “Luckily, thanks to that, our China p2p volume has grown tremendously…we are seeing like a “few million dollars a day” in trading volume on average…”

The exchange was also reported to be planning to open an office in Beijing. Zhao told Bloomberg that Binance does not have an office in Beijing. The spokeswoman added that the exchange currently does not have fixed operations in mainland China.

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