As local search engines stop providing results on crypto-keywords
China’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies has reached a new crescendo, with the nation’s Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday proclaiming it has arrested over 1000 people and shut down 170 gangs that provided crypto-linked money-laundering services.
The Ministry’s announcement says it detected, and dismantled, gangs that provided money-laundering services to criminal organisations.
Some of those organisations allegedly laundered ill-gotten gains from other ventures by building coin-mining farms.
Others are what China calls “two cards” scammers, who funnel their ill-gotten gains to acquire phone cards that are shipped outside China, then use call credit stored in the cards to make scam calls back into the Middle Kingdom. The proceeds of those scams are laundered using cryptocurrencies.
- China announces ‘crackdown’ on Bitcoin mining and trading
- China’s digital currency adds support for AliPay – the Alibaba payment app with over 700 million users
- Hong Kong to explore its own digital currency and keep testing China’s Digital Yuan
The Ministry therefore asserted that its actions protected China’s citizens, phone networks, and the stability of its financial system, and celebrated the raids by posting the image below to its Weibo account.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s view of phone and crypto crooks.
China’s also cracked down on ‘net smut this week, closing websites that feature the stuff, cracking down on users that shared sexual material on social networks, and closing down a video sharing app whose name translates as “Eggplant”. The anti-smut effort was conducted to clean up the internet behind the Great Firewall. ®
