They are now prohibiting the selling of telephone cards and bank cards, chocking off another avenue for Over the Counter (OTC) trading especially for those that have been blacklisted.
The central bank announced a blacklist of 1,091 OTC trading accounts on September 18, requiring they are suspended for three years and are prohibited from online transactions for five years.
Much in China goes through WeChat Pay or AliPay, which usually require a telephone number. Thus this prohibition on selling telephone cards makes OTC trading even more difficult especially for those blacklisted.
Industry insiders say the banks are targeting the simple buying and selling of bitcoins, despite the official stance this has to do with anti-money laundering measures.
Such peer to peer trading can be difficult to detect in some ways, but in some other ways people usually don’t sent or receive money from numerous random accounts potentially daily. Making them stand out.
Businesses do however, so their system is the commercial bank sends an alert to the central bank which then opens an investigation and maintains a blacklist.
In the west, suspicious activity reports go to federal enforcement agencies, which ultimately are accountable to the elected, rather than to the FED or the central bank which is not accountable to anyone.
In China however the central bank has unchallengely grabbed power with it now seemingly having the authority to shut down accounts and cut off individuals from having monetary functions without any recourse to an independent judiciary.
Last month, a USDT OTC trader from OKex was investigated for allegedly receiving money from a scam, with it unclear what happened afterwards.
It remains the case that no law has been passed in China to ban bitcoin, with bitcoin and other cryptos remaining legal for buying and selling.
However, the central bank there is nonetheless ruling by diktat through policies of prohibiting the free exchange of funds where they relate to cryptos, so creating practically a ban of sorts without a word said in their parliament or in their judiciary.
