China’s major virtual-currency exchange BTC China has suspended yuan deposits from the Bank of China, according to a tweet sent from its account.
China has intensified its crackdown on Bitcoin amid fears in Beijing that it is being used as a tool for money laundering and circumventing currency controls.
Shanghai-based BTC China, currently the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, made an announcement via Twitter saying to its English-speaking users today that it has finally suspended yuan (RMB) deposits from the Bank of China (BOC).
The similar announcement was made by the company on 26th April, BTC China used Weibo to inform its users that the exchange was no longer accepting Chinese currency deposits to user accounts from a major bank, China Merchant’s Bank.
The message from BTC china in a tweet on May 6, 2014: “Dear users, Due to regulations, we have suspended CNY deposits from Bank of China. For further enquiries, pls email: support@btcchina.com.”
It is known that Chinese exchanges have suffered major problems recently after banks finally responded to repeated official instructions from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) – China’s central bank – and broke up all connections with bitcoin businesses.
All of them are said to be seeking new business opportunities after seeing trade volumes drop down.
Bank Forces Closures
Furthermore, some smaller exchanges have closed their businesses altogether, including FXBTC and the boutique exchange Linkcoin.
Both exchanges cited “unprecedented pressure” from the central bank policy and restrictions on banking services as the reason for shutting down, admitting they could not stay in business without banking access.
Linkcoin exchange posted the following statement: “May 1st announcement: due to policy reasons the deposit channel is blocked – our site will be closed on May 11th.”
“Users please withdraw your RMB and cryptocurrency. If you still have assets after the 11th our website [sic] you can contact us to process it manually.”
“We will keep the contact channel active for one month, if there is any policy change we don’t deny the possibility of bringing our website back online.”
Later in the news, CoinDesk reported earlier today that CEOs of five major Chinese bitcoin exchanges such as OkCoin, Huobi, BTC China, BtcTrade and CHBTC, have pulled out from this weekend’s Global Bitcoin Summit in the capital of China, also because of central bank restrictions related to bitcoin activity.
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