China’s Crackdown On BTC Enhances With Potential Jail Sentences

China’s crackdown on BTC enhances recently with potential fines and jail sentences being imposed as we can see further in our latest Bitcoin news.

The fundraising with digital currencies is illegal in China already but now the prosecutors will go after offenders that have major penalties in tow. China’s Supreme court issued a ruling that specifies penalties for offenders that use crypto to raise funds. The penalties range up to 10 years in prison and fines up to 500,000 yuan. China’s crackdown on BTC stepped up another level thanks to the new Supreme Court ruling which paved the way for fines and long jail sentences for people that are found guilty of fundraising via crypto tokens.

The Supreme Court’s decision specified that virtual currency transactions used for raising funds can now be prosecuted with penalties varying on the amount of money raised via the transaction. China banned crypto fundraising in 2017 amid the surge in initial coin offerings and today’s ruling amends the country’s laws to specify that the digital currencies are included in the forms of fundraising which are illegal in China and allow for prosecution.

The law takes effect on March 1 and the potential penalties can vary based on the amount that is involved in the alleged crimes. If found guilty, the offender could face up to 10 years in prison as well as fines as high as 500,000 yuan. China gradually increased the rhetoric and rulings against crypto in the past few years but it took most of its actions in 2021. A few Chinese provinces shut down mining operations after the Chinese Vice Premier Liu Hu wrote that teh country has to crack down on BTC mining and its trading behavior.

The Chinese miners produced about 67% of the new BTC before the ban according to the University of Cambridge but that number dropped as miners were forced to shut down or move out of the country. The US topped the list with 35% of the total BTC mining hash rate while the People’s Bank of china instructed the country’s top banks to target transactions with crypto-related companies. The People’sBank and other governemnt bodies reiterated China’s ban on crypto.

All while China pushed forward with its plans to release a central bank digital currency dubbed the digital yuan. Unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies, the Chinese government will have bigger control over the yuan that could replace paper money and coins and China even released its digital wallet ahead of its pilot program.