China Is Eyeing Offshore Cryptocurrency Exchanges For Effective Trading

If you think you haven’t heard anything about China and cryptocurrencies this week (which rarely happens), prepare to be amazed.

According to a report in the Shanghai-based publication Yical, China is once again coming close to to the enforcement of policies that prohibit cryptocurrency trading. However, the country is eyeing opportunities in the offshore world, all in addition to their domestic websites used by traders and investors to facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) trades.

The department has placed scrutiny on all cryptocurrency exchanges that were formerly headquartered in mainland China but relocated offshore because of the fiat-to-cryptocurrency trading ban which was put in action by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) in September 2017.

According to the government in China, these policies were designed to prevent pyramid schemes, money laundering and other fraudulent activities in the industry. However, despite policing these trading venues, the authorities in China are still struggling to maintain these policies – mostly because of the threat coming from small-scale traders that are actively trading through P2P and over-the-counter (OTC) platforms.

The entire situation has led the cryptocurrency trading volume in China to denominate and even affect the Chinese renminbi (RMB) that plummeted from a peak of 90% to somewhere less than 1%.