In China, there has been a dramatic situation for investors in cryptocurrencies for several years. Trading and mining crypto has been officially banned since September 2021, which is still the case at this time. However, this says nothing about owning digital assets. A Chinese judge has ruled that this is perfectly legal.
Owning cryptocurrencies is legal in China
This is what the local media station 0Daily writes based on an official report that has since been taken offline one of China’S people’s courtS‘. Whether this is China’s Supreme Court or a lower court is unclear.
In any case, the judge believes that cryptocurrencies should be treated as property of Chinese residents and are therefore not illegal. This means that owning cryptocurrencies in China is protected by law. However, crime is governed by the same laws as the rest of Chinese finance, just like the rest of the world. Whether this means that the Supreme Court and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also agree is also not yet known.
China is increasingly open to cryptocurrencies
It is clear that China is also slowly but surely warming to cryptocurrencies. For example, a significant portion of all blockchain patents worldwide come from China. In fact, blockchain is already being actively used by Chinese companies. In addition, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are very popular there, which apparently do not fall under the trading ban.
Furthermore, it appears that Chinese SOEs are simply engaged in the crypto industry, although this is done through Hong Kong and not from mainland China. Within China itself, crypto exchanges like Binance are still blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” as of 2021.
However, this doesn’t seem to have that much of an impact on the population. Chinese users account for the majority of trading volume on Binance, although cryptocurrency trading is still banned. Perhaps that’s why the news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Binance was seen on Chinese state television.