8Huobi is retiring all accounts belonging to citizens of Mainland China in response to the local government ban on crypto transactions.
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China’s biggest digital assets exchange platform, Huobi, announced on Sunday, September 25th, that it was to begin retiring its Chinese customers. The announcement comes on the back of increased regulatory pressure from local authorities.
Digital asset prices experienced a crash this past Friday, the 24th of September, with the benchmark crypto asset, Bitcoin, taking a 3% knock, while $ETH shed nearly 5% of its value. The price dump followed news from China, claiming that local authorities had – once again – banned digital assets.
Though this should come as no shock to the market, as the Asian territory’s main financial authority, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has repeatedly put varying bans on digital assets throughout the years. This time however, the PBoC has made it illegal to transact in digital assets. Thus putting a spanner in the works of a vibrant local digital assets industry.
The nation, which was home to some of the world’s biggest digital asset trading platforms, makes up around 45% of global crypto trading volumes. It’s hostile stance on digital assets, however, has seen many crypto-oriented firms move their headquarters to friendlier shores.
Huobi, following on the heels of FTX, which reacted to the harsh operational conditions imposed by the Chinese government by relocating their head office to the Bahamas (as the firm announced on Saturday, September 25th) announced that it would cease to service Chinese clients. In compliance with Chinese regulations, Huobi Global announced that it “has ceased account registration for new users in Mainland China, effective September 24, 2021 (UTC+8).”
The crypto asset brokerage firm continued to state that it would commence with gradually retiring all clients who are native to Mainland China. This is a process the company aims to complete by 24:00 (UTC+8) on Dec 31, 2021, after which, all accounts belonging to Chinese nationals will be fully retired.
“This has to be the 20th time that China has banned bitcoin,” opined Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at CoinShares, to CNBC Make It, shortly after the news broke, “There’s always something ‘different’ about the bans, but this happens all the time and it’s never really dramatic in the larger scheme of things.”
It remains to be seen whether or not the ban will negatively impact the crypto industry. However, many appear to be of the belief that the current round of hostile action towards the digital assets industry is the nation’s way of maneuvering to introduce its new “Digital Yuan” Central Bank Issued Digital Currency, or CBDC.
