Pressure from Chinese authorities on the cryptocurrency industry will lead to the closure of OTC platforms run by major trading platforms. Co-founder and former head of exchange BTCC Bobby Li said in an interview with CoinDesk.
"They will stop offering their services to mainland Chinese residents. There are still OTC users making transactions, but I think that number will gradually decrease," Lee said.
The popularity of OTC platforms among local traders began to grow in 2017 following the country's tighter regulation. Amid the new crackdown, exchanges Binance and Huobi have already stopped registering new users in mainland China.
According to Li, the authorities will equate cryptocurrencies with "foreign assets" similar to real estate. Despite the regulatory situation, the former BTCC chief expects the price of the first cryptocurrency to rise above $100,000 by the end of 2021.
In June, Li said that the ban on mining in the PRC was aimed at deterring citizens from making high-risk investments.
Earlier, China's State Development and Reform Committee pointed to the negative environmental impact of mining and its "negligible" contribution to the country's economy.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has described as illegal the activities of platforms that exchange digital assets among themselves or for fiat. Prior to this, Wen Xinxiang, director of the NBK's payments and settlement department, called cryptocurrencies and staplecoins a threat to the traditional financial system.
Against this backdrop, Ethereum's largest mining pool, SparkPool, announced it would stop serving Chinese users and then shut down operations outside the country.
Online commerce giant Alibaba announced a ban on the sale of bitcoin miners on its platform.
As a reminder, at the end of September, the media reported the blocking of CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap analytics services in mainland China.
Looking for the most secure place to buy Vechain ?
Buy Vechain: This is how it works. What Should You Look Out For?
How to Buy Cryptocurrencies.
