China’s central bank has banned all financial transactions involving cryptocurrencies, declaring all of them, including bitcoin, illegal.
The notice bans all related financial activities involving cryptocurrencies, such as trading crypto, selling tokens, transactions involving virtual currency derivatives and “illegal fundraising”.
The central bank argues that in recent years, the trading and speculation of bitcoin and other virtual currencies have become widespread, disrupting economic and financial order, giving rise to money laundering, illegal fund-raising, fraud, pyramid schemes and other illegal and criminal activities.
China is one of the world’s largest crypto-currency markets and in September 2019, it accounted for 75% of the world’s bitcoin energy use. By April 2021, that had fallen to 46%.
In March this year, India also announced plans to pass a law that would criminalise possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets. This followed a government plan in January 2021 that sought to ban private virtual currencies such as bitcoin while building a structure for official digital currency.
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