China’s war against crypto continues as Weibo bans at least a dozen popular cryptocurrency accounts

• Wiebo’s crackdown comes less than a month after the People’s Bank of China announced a crackdown on crypto.
• Weibo had also shut down crypto-related accounts back in 2019.
• Yesterday’s bans included dozens of popular crypto-related accounts.
  

After China’s central bank’s moves against crypto companies, the country’s largest social media platform Weibo is now cracking down on cryptocurrency accounts. The company banned over a dozen popular crypto-related accounts on June 6, marking an escalation in the country’s recent war against the cryptocurrency industry.

This is the second time Weibo has cracked down on crypto-related accounts. The company had banned the accounts of crypto exchanges Binance, Huobi and OKEx in March. It had also banned Binance co-founder Yi He’s account back in 2019, along with other popular accounts that posted about the crypto industry or community.

But yesterday’s ban is more consequential in a way…

China is amongst the more consequential cryptocurrency markets in the world, not only because it spends money on trading, but because it actually acts as a backbone for the industry. Estimates say that the country accounts for over 70% of all Bitcoin mining in the world.

Mining, which happens through large crypto mining farms in China, are responsible for maintaining the blockchain ledgers and authenticating crypto transactions. This means they’re essentially the Visa and Mastercard of this world, and are the middle-men, essential to facilitating a large part of the world’s crypto transactions. Mining farms generate their revenues through new currencies that are generated when a transaction is authenticated.

So, crackdowns in China can potentially affect the sentiments of crypto traders, companies and regulators all over the world. The crypto market lost as much as $460 billion in 24 hours, after the People’s Bank of China announced plans to crack down on crypto on May 19.

The good news though is that Weibo’s crackdown doesn’t seem to have affected the market in terms of prices. The top two cryptocurrencies in the world — Bitcoin and Ethereum — had stabilized over the past two weeks, and the same seems to have continued. According to Coinmarketcap, Bitcoin closed at $35,862.38 on June 6, while Ethereum closed at $2,616. The two tokens had closed $35,551.96 and $2,558.23, respectively, on the day before. They were trading at $36,637.29 and $2,827.80, respectively, at 6.30pm on June 7.

Having said that, there has been a big slump in the price of crypto over the past month or so. Bitcoin and Ethereum hit all time highs during the first quarter of the year, with the former dropping by almost 50% over the past month. While some say this is a market correction, and the beginning of a bear market for crypto, others say it could spell trouble for the future of the industry.


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Highlights of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address on June 7