On Friday, China Digital Times leaked a notice from the Chinese government asking media outlets not to report on this weekend’s The Global Bitcoin Summit in Beijing. The media ban follows increased scrutiny on bitcoin from the country’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, and closures of bitcoin-related accounts from almost all of China’s […]

In terms of total assets and market capitalization, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is the largest bank in the world. The ICBC controls nearly $15.5 trillion in assets, and had a net income of more than $200 billion dollars in 2011. As powerful as the ICBC is, however, it still answers to […]

Earlier today, China’s five largest bitcoin exchanges released a joint statement on the Twitter-like social-networking site Weibo. The statement acts as both a mea culpa for the ongoing problems in with bitcoin in China, as well as the first public announcement of a move towards self-regulation for the exchanges. The five participating exchanges are OKCoin, […]

Citing new regulatory pressures on bitcoin-related banking, Chinese bitcoin exchange FXBTC announced it will be closing down next week. Although bitcoin exchanges remain legal in the country, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has been pressuring the country’s banks to close the accounts of bitcoin business, leaving users with no easy way to deposit or […]

Is the People’s Bank of China too big to create appropriate bitcoin regulation? According to a guest post on BitcoinBlog.de, that may be the case. Chinese IT entrepreneur Zhang Weiwu has a decade-long history of working with authorities in the country, and believes that bitcoin’s recent woes with the Chinese central bank is less a […]

Following a post on the China Merchants Bank website late last week, Chinese bitcoin exchange BTC China announced that they are halting all deposits in yuan. In a post on BTC China’s Weibo social networking account, the exchange claimed the move was made “out of consideration for user security and stabilization operations.” It’s not clear […]

Bitcoin prices fell by roughly $50 late last night following a story on China’s Caixin news service that the People’s Bank of China had privately warned banks and payment companies to close the accounts of bitcoin-related businesses. According to a translation posted to Reddit, PBoC officials met with representatives from several large banks, Tenpay, PayPal […]

China’s rumored April 15th “bitcoin ban” may not have materialized, but that doesn’t mean things have stabilized for the country’s cryptocurrency exchanges. Earlier today, major Chinese exchanges OKCoin reported that its accounts at the China Construction Bank had been closed, while the owner of smaller exchange CHBTC had his personal account (which had been serving […]

According to the rumor posted last month by China’s Caixin financial news service, April 15 would be a day of reckoning for bitcoin exchanges across the country. Accounts would be closed, and remaining funds seized. Customers would be unable to deposit new funds to buy bitcoin, and exchanges would be unable to deposit earnings in […]

For the past six weeks, fear of a looming crackdown on bitcoin-related banking accounts in China has pushed cryptocurrency prices down across the board. Bitcoin, which was trading in the $630 range even in the immediate aftermath of the Mt.Gox fiasco, plummeted to under $360 last week amid speculation that the People’s Bank of China […]