Despite the fact that China began restricting the usage of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin (BTC), as early as 2013, it has achieved and maintained the position of a “silent crypto whale” because of its restrictive policies.
As a reminder, on December 5, 2013, the Chinese government restricted its banks from utilizing Bitcoin as a currency, citing worries about money laundering and financial stability, as reported at the time by The New York Times.
In fact, the instruction issued by the People’s Bank of China and four other ministries and agencies said that the measure was necessary to “defend the position of the renminbi as the official currency, avoid money laundering concerns, and safeguard financial stability.”
The anti-crypto campaign continued, culminating in a state-wide ban on all crypto-related services in the middle of 2021, which failed to prevent China from placing among the top ten leading nations in crypto adoption.
Simultaneously, Bitcoin mining continued in China, momentarily halted by the period after the implementation of the ban, with 69 available Bitcoin nodes as of December 6, according to data from the crypto analytics portal Bitrawr.
Nine years after the first Bitcoin prohibition, it was discovered that China has so much bitcoin that, if its leadership so wanted, it could upset the very foundations of the cryptocurrency industry in a matter of seconds.
In particular, the Chinese government presently possesses 194,000 Bitcoin and 833,000 Ethereum after seizing a huge sum of Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) from the Plus Token program in 2019.
According to BuyBitcoinWorldwide statistics received on December 6, the People’s Republic of China now owns more Bitcoin than companies such as Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy and Elon Musk’s Tesla, Inc.
