A number of major Chinese news sites have appeared to go dark amid further crypto crackdown in the country. ChainNews, Odaily and Block123 were all inaccessible on Wednesday, as the Chinese government tightened their grip on the crackdown.
ChainNews took to Twitter to post its Telegram. The telegram states that the news site would be offline for 8-10 hours as the site undergoes maintenance.
When asked via Telegram a few days later on why the site has remained dark, the ChainNews official account said that the Twitter and Telegram account would continue to be updated during the website update.
Odaily was also inaccessible to users on Wednesday. Instead, the news site has invited its audience to join its Telegram community via an Oct 9 pinned Tweet. The news site has not yet commented on the move.
Despite the uncertainty, the two platforms have continued to actively use their Twitter and Telegram accounts, which are banned in China .
The People’s Bank of China, as well as a number of other top regulators, have said that they will be increasing the oversight of media that provide crypto information. According to a policy announcement released on Sept 24, this is considered to be China’s most severe anti-crypto move to date.
Along with the two major news sources, news site and app CoinWorld has also been closed down in its Beijing entity as of Nov 15. This comes months after it announced closing in July. On Saturday, the Communist party’s top anti-corruption watchdog announced that it was expelling Xiao Yi from the party. The expelletion is the result of his involvement in crypto mining. Yi is the most high-profile member to face charges for his support of cryptocurrency.
China’s crackdown on crypto has been tightening since September. The government’s aim is to completely wipe crypto-related offerings from the country.
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