The cryptocurrency has once again come under attack from the Chinese government after China National Radio (CNR), one of the higher-level mouthpieces of the Chinese government recently said that it has released doubts about the legality of the services that are being offered by OKEx.
This is the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange that was launched by OKCoin. OKCoin is one of the three most popular trading platforms in China right now, wielding a lot of influence in the marketplace.
CNR went on the attack against OKEx in both its podcast channel, Voice of China and in a print article entitled ‘Exchanges That Still Prevail After the Ban’. CNR accused OKEx of violating the current trading rules by giving Bitcoin contracts to Chinese investors in the mainland after it moved its business overseas.
The broadcaster’s sources were two investors named Yang and Zhang. They say that they have used OKEx’s services and claim that the company’s Bitcoin contracts trading allows people to wager on unregulated Bitcoin futures. There is also an added option to use leverage to increase both returns and risk.
The article was pretty strong and finished with a withering attack on OKEx’s business move to register itself in Belize, while maintaining headquarters in Hong Kong. This has allowed it to dodge quite a few of the mainland regulations on Bitcoin. This is possible because Hong Kong is a special administrative region that is considered outside of mainland China’s jurisdiction.
CNR’s investigation says that the problem with this strategy is that OKEx is using tech innovations from its OKCoin team that is based in Beijing. It is also concerned with the fact that the exchange also offers over-the-counter trading for cryptocurrency to investors in mainland China.
Bitcoin Continues To Take Heavy Fire
While OKEx has been the target of the CNR attack, bitcoin has also come under heavy fire. CNR is running a cryptocurrency investigation series and the article on OKEx was just one in the cryptocurrency series. The second article was aimed at ICOs that offered tokens to Chinese investors and it also damaging to the cryptocurrency industry and bitcoin.
China has taken a rigid stance against bitcoin for a number of years. In 2013, the People’s Bank of China stopped all financial institutions from handling any Bitcoin transactions. Additionally, they stopped third-party payment processors from accepting Bitcoin payments in the same year. Bitcoin trading is still legal though, but it is limited to only private individuals. Crackdowns have also been made on Bitcoin mining, especially since the start of 2018.