The complexity of China’s cryptocurrency market

China is unique in many ways, and its cryptocurrency market is not an exception. Officially it is a communist state created by Mao Zedong 70 years ago. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the country’s GDP depends on the private sector. Another interesting fact that it is famous for the “one country two systems” principle. The system dates back to 1997 when the U.K. and China reached an agreement about the status of Hong Kong.

However, ongoing protests in Hong Kong, which started several months ago shows that China is not completely following this principle.

It is worth mentioning that China is home to more than 1.3 billion people. Also, it has the second-largest economy in the world. Those two factors make this Asian country very attractive to potential crypto investors. Nevertheless, in 2017 China made the decision to ban initial coin offerings (ICO) in September of that year.

Also, cryptocurrency exchanges are banned. Moreover, it impossible to conduct any operations such as Bitcoin transactions as banks and other financial institutions are not accepting such payments. In this situation, people who are not familiar with the local cryptocurrency market may think that the local market is practically nonexistent. However, this is not the case as China is a major crypto mining hub.

Chinese authorities and cryptocurrency market

As mentioned above, there is a vibrant local market which is developing despite all of the problems. Last week, China’s President attended a so-called “study session.” He said that China should not only embrace this technology but also should play more active roles when it comes to forming global standards.

His speech increased the interest in digital currencies. Some of the top universities in China even created courses about blockchain. The funniest part of the story is that they decided to offer such a course shortly after Xi Jinping’s speech.

Let’s not forget that Chinese authorities have a different vision regarding the future of blockchain in China. They support centralized cryptocurrencies.