China’s Sina Finance adds cryptocurrency support on its application amid government clampdown

China’s Sina Finance adds cryptocurrency support on its application amid government clampdown

The People’s Bank of China [PBOC], the central regulatory authority that regulates Financial Institutions in the country, had issued a statement on June 25 that it would block access to all domestic and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and ICO websites.

However, a few days later, a new announcement from the country made waves. China’s largest financial news provider, Sina Finance, has added Bitcoin and cryptocurrency support to its application, reported cnLedger on Twitter.

This decision by the prominent new service provider comes at a time when the country is aiming to clamp down on all cryptocurrency trading with a ban on foreign exchanges. Even though the new website had charts and other news articles about cryptocurrency, it acts only to provide recent market events.

Even Facebook’s announcement about its entry in the cryptosphere did not impact China’s Internet giants and they do not intend to follow its lead, reported Coindesk. The CEO of Tencent, Pony Ma, told the publication that the deciding factor for Libra’s success would be regulations. Tencent does not wish to follow Facebook’s play as Ma had made a statement in March 2018 of not issuing any coin.

“The greatness of blockchain technology depends on how it’s used. Issuing initial coin offerings or digital currencies still bear too much risks … Tencent will not issue a coin and does not consider to be involved in that.”

However, as for the ban on crypto, it hasn’t been working quite well as a crypto asset-related app has been trending in China’s iOS App store. cnLedger tweeted about this on June 24,

“Bulls are back? According to online data service providers (such as Qimai and Kuchuan), crypto app Huobi is now the 7th hottest searched keyword in Chinese iOS App Store.”

Larry Cermak of The Block pointed out on Twitter on June 28 that “there is virtually no spike in Google searches for large cryptocurrency exchanges” like Binance, Coinbase etc. However, there was a noticeable spike in searches for exchanges with predominantly Asian demographics (OKEx and Huobi).

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