China Declares Victory over Bitcoin Speculators and Online Lenders

The central bank of China, the People’s Bank of China, has bragged about its effectiveness in preventing internet lending and Bitcoin.

In a WeChat post, the Bank describes how it has spent the last five years “comprehensively cleaning up and straightening the financial system” in accordance with the wise advice of China’s president Xi Jinping.

The Bank lists continuing to crack down on domestic virtual currency trading speculation as one of its successes in that area. These initiatives caused “China’s domestic Bitcoin trading volume to dramatically decline in the global market.”

Whether the lack of a mention of bitcoin mining is a result of machine translation or an intentional choice of words is unclear.

However, it is evident what is meant by the statement, “The special rectification of Internet financial dangers has successfully been accomplished, and approximately 5,000 P2P online lending organisations have been closed.” Peer-to-peer lending is not popular in China because it is thought to be too difficult to control and a financial risk. This is the main justification Beijing gave for…