ATLEAST FOR NOW CHINA TO SHUT BITCOIN EXCHANGES

Expanding its recent crackdown on initial coin offerings, the Chinese central government has now decreed a ban on bitcoin exchanges.

In an unexpected move, the Central Bank of China ruled that all companies dealing in cryptocurrencies, not only bitcoin, will no longer be legal. The move has been described as a ban on “virtual currency trading services.”

Chinese news site Caixin confirmed the link between the ICO investigation and the bitcoin exchange ban, quoting an official as saying that “the future in China can not have the so-called virtual currency and the currency between the trading platform,” an apparent link between both bitcoin and ICOs.

Articulating a sledgehammer response to the problem, the same official is quoted as saying “in this way, there is no so-called tokens, virtual currency and RMB between the two.” Those quotes are not entirely clear, but it would appear that the Chinese central government has decided that the easiest way to deal with ICOs and related crypto issues is to simply ban all them, at least for now.