As the war against cryptocurrency intensifies in China, report has it that crypto exchange platforms have resorted to regularly changing their domain names to bypass the crackdown. Crypto investors have also found ways of buying and selling digital assets with little need for exchanges.
According to South China Morning Post, this newly adopted method has made the anti-crypto war more difficult for the Chinese government. Many local exchanges have also relocated to areas outside of mainland China which has made it extremely difficult to track and control their activities over the internet.
Although the Chinese government recently boasted of its success in the war against cryptocurrency with the low volume of cryptocurrency transactions in the country, it was more recently found that 124 crypto exchanges have been providing crypto trading and exchange services to willing crypto investors in China but have not been tracked.
The Chief Operations Officer of TideBit, a Honkong-based exchange said this concerning the ongoing struggle to control crypto trading in the country:
“The latest warning and potentially increased monitoring of foreign platforms is targeted at a batch of smaller exchanges that had claimed to be foreign entities, but are in fact operating in China claiming they have outsourced their operations to a Chinese company. Those exchanges whose website landing pages are in Chinese have drawn particular scrutiny by regulators.”
Also as a means of avoiding the trouble of going through crypto exchanges since the government declared its intention to ban digital currency exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs) last year, peer-to-peer exchange of crypto assets has become more popular among investors in China as a means of buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.
These transactions are made untraceable by using VPN networks and with USDT instead of fiat currencies. The USDT is a U.S Dollar backed crypto asset that can be easily redeemed through Tether and used to buy any cryptocurrency.
Crypto investors have also resorted to the use of cold storage due to uncertainty concerning crypto exchanges and ICOs, making transaction volume to drop by more than 30%.
With China’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies and the new measures being adopted by crypto investors and traders, it seems there is an “evolutionary arms race” going on between the government and the cryptocurrency industry in the country which is not likely to end anytime soon
As China has not been very successful in its ban on Facebook and other popular websites, will it succeed in war against cryptocurrencies?
