SHANGHAI — China's central bank said on Monday it
had recently summoned some banks and payment firms, including
China Construction Bank and Alipay, urging them to crack down harder on
cryptocurrency trading.
اضافة اعلان
The People's Bank of China's meeting came after China's State
Council, or cabinet, last month said it would tighten restrictions on bitcoin
trading and mining.
Beijing has sharply ratcheted up its campaign in the last
few weeks.
The PBOC urged institutions at the meeting to launch
thorough checks on clients' accounts to identify those involved in
cryptocurrency transactions, and promptly cut their payment channels. It did
not mention when the meeting was held.
"Speculative trading in virtual currencies roils
economic and financial order, spawns the risks of criminal activities such as
illegal asset transfers and money laundering, and endangers people's
wealth," the PBOC said in a statement.
Other participants in the PBOC's meeting included
state-owned lenders Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Agricultural
Bank of China (AgBank) and Postal Savings Bank of China.
Bitcoin's bull run globally had revived speculative trading
in China, where people buy cryptocurrencies using yuan via bank accounts or
payment platforms.
Last month, three industry associations issued a ban on
crypto-related financial services, but the bodies are much less powerful than
the PBOC.
The PBOC said its recent meeting with financial institutions
was aimed at fully implementing State Council's crypto ban.
Bitcoin tumbled almost 10 percent on Monday, with market
players citing jitters over China's expanding crackdown on bitcoin mining in
thin liquidity for the losses. It was last down 8.3%, on course for its biggest
daily drop in a month.
Know your customer
The PBOC asked banks and payment companies to invest more in
technologies used to better identify crypto-related transactions, and know
their customers better, the central bank statement said.
After the central bank's notice, AgBank, ICBC, CCB and
Alipay vowed to execute what they were told to do.
AgBank said that it would conduct due diligence on clients
to root out illegal crypto-related activities and shut down suspicious
accounts.
Alipay, the ubiquitous payment platform owned by fintech
giant Ant Group, said in a separate statement that it would set up a regulator
monitoring system targeting key websites and accounts to detect illegal
crypto-related transactions.
Alipay added it would blacklist any merchants involved in
virtual currency transactions.
Alipay and Tencent-owned Wechat Pay had been listed as means
of payment on the websites of some over-the-counter markets, where Chinese
individuals buy cryptocurrencies with the Chinese yuan
ICBC, China's biggest lender, cautioned the public in a
statement against the risks of cryptocurrency trading and initial coin
offerings (ICOs).
As China ramped up its campaign against cryptocurrencies in
recent weeks, bans on cryptomining have been issued in major bitcoin mining
hubs, including Sichuan, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia.
Cryptomining is a big business in China, which accounts for
over half of global bitcoin production.
China has also blocked a slew of cryptocurrency-related
social media accounts, and barred the search for major cryptocurrency exchanges
such as Binance and Huobi on baidu.com and Twitter-like platform Weibo.
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