Arguably the biggest social media platform in China, WeChat has updated its policies, banning crypto and NFT-related accounts on its platform.
Under these new guidelines, all the accounts handling issuance, trading, and financing of crypto fall under the “illegal business” category. Moreover, the policy also looks at NFT trading, stating that “accounts that provide services or content related to the secondary transaction of digital collections shall also be dealt with in accordance with this article.”
Hong Kong-based crypto news reporter Wu Blockchain (Colin Wu) pointed this move signifying the difference of action. This is essential as WeChat has more than 1.1 billion daily users in China.
As for punishments, WeChat stated that the new policy will “order the violating official accounts to rectify within a time limit”. Besides this, they’ll “restrict some functions of the account until the permanent account is banned.”
We all know that the government of China rolled out a phased ban on crypto in the country last year. At that time, the move essentially forced a large portion of crypto miners to move to other countries. However, the social media platform looked at this section after a pretty long time of the ban.
Also, the government of China considers NFTs as assets. Due to this, any individual can purchase these assets in fiat currency. However, to be on the safe side, companies and platforms generally ban such trading. This is to avoid potential compliance issues over the financialization of the tech.
Besides this, officials in China criticize crypto and NFTs which is why WeChat extended its policy.
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