Chinese Crypto exchanges are changing domains like crazy to avoid the ban

Crypto Ban

While you might think that cryptocurrency trading is a thing of the past in China after the ban, the reality is that dozens of exchanges have found a way to continue to operate. Sure, China banned all the exchanges both foreign and domestic, but they can only enforce a ban on exchange sites they know about.

Enter domain names.

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“Despite multiple attempts by Beijing to shut down all local exchange platforms since September 2017, cryptocurrency trading had continued to prosper, with many Chinese exchanges attempting to skirt the ban by reincarnating themselves under different domain names.” (Source – South China Morning Post)

Since you can register a domain for $10 or less, exchanges are doing just that and jumping from domain to domain. So when the government finds out about an exchange and bans that domain, they just buy another name and move the exchange. In the end, it could turn into a never-ending game of cat and mouse where, right now, it looks like the mouse is winning.

Rewind 100 years ago and a government could stomp out just about any business, what they were doing was physical and could actually be shut down, in-person. Today, with businesses able to change location for less than $10 simply by registering a new domain name, enforcing things like crypto trading bans really is impossible. Couple this with the fact that the cryptocurrency itself is decentralized and I think we’ll find that over time, governments will have to focus on regulations because bans, as we can see, can be sidestepped for less than the cost of two lattes of coffee at Starbucks.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton