China Cryptocurrency Ban: What It Means and How Traders Still Play the Game

When the China cryptocurrency ban, a total prohibition on all crypto-related activities enforced by the People's Bank of China since 2021 and fully locked in by June 1, 2025. Also known as China's crypto crackdown, it made owning, trading, mining, and even promoting digital assets illegal for citizens and businesses. This wasn’t just a policy shift—it was a full-scale digital currency takeover. The government didn’t just shut down exchanges; it forced banks to cut off crypto-linked accounts, blocked access to foreign platforms, and started tracking wallet addresses through surveillance tools. The goal? Replace decentralized money with the digital yuan, China’s state-controlled central bank digital currency (CBDC) designed for full government oversight and transaction control. No anonymity. No volatility. No Bitcoin. Just control.

But here’s the twist: despite the ban, underground crypto, a hidden network of peer-to-peer trading, offshore exchanges, and cash-based transactions that bypass China’s digital restrictions. moved over $86 billion in 2022–2023. How? Traders use WeChat and QQ groups to match buyers and sellers, pay in cash at convenience stores, or swap crypto through offshore P2P platforms like LocalBitcoins and Paxful. Some even use VPNs to access foreign exchanges, though that’s risky. Mining didn’t disappear either—it just went dark. Factories in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia kept running, powered by cheap hydroelectricity, hidden behind fake data centers. The crypto mining ban, a core part of China’s strategy to eliminate energy-intensive crypto operations and redirect power to state priorities. pushed miners abroad—to Kazakhstan, Russia, and the U.S.—but the demand never died. People still want crypto. They just do it quietly.

The PBOC crypto policy, the centralized, top-down approach by China’s central bank to eliminate private digital currencies and enforce the digital yuan as the only legal digital money. isn’t just about control—it’s about power. The government doesn’t just want to stop Bitcoin. It wants to make sure no one ever builds an alternative again. That’s why they’re seizing wallets, fining users, and pressuring tech companies to scan for crypto-related keywords. Yet, the more they crack down, the more creative the workarounds become. What you’ll find in these posts isn’t just news—it’s a map of how people keep trading when the system says no. From real seizure cases to how traders avoid detection, this collection shows the real story behind the headlines.