SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Binance will stop the use of the Chinese yuan on its peer-to-peer trading platform, the latest move by major global cryptocurrency exchanges to cut their ties with mainland Chinese investors following an intense crackdown on the sector.
Binance, one of the world’s largest exchange by trading volumes, said in a Wednesday statement it will remove the Chinese yuan section of its consumer-to-consumer platform on Dec. 31 this year, and mainland Chinese users will have their accounts switched to “withdraw only mode”
China’s most powerful regulators last month intensified a crackdown on cryptocurrencies with a blanket ban on all crypto transactions and mining, causing crypto exchanges and service providers scrambling to sever business ties with mainland Chinese clients.
Binance’s origins lie in China, though it emphasised in Wednesday’s statement that it withdrew from mainland China in 2017, the time of a previous regulatory crackdown.
Also on Wednesday, OKEX, another major cryptocurrency exchange with its origins in China said in a statement it had shifted its core business to international markets since 2017 and stopped promoting and providing services to the mainland China market.
In its latest move, China added cryptocurrency mining to a draft list of industries in which investment is restricted or prohibited.
(Reporting by Jason Xue and Andrew Galbraith, Editing by Louise Heavens)
