National People's Congress Representative Wu Xiaoling: The central bank should be responsible for supervising Bitcoin trading platforms

On March 9, Wu Xiaoling, deputy to the National People's Congress and vice chairman of the NPC Financial and Economic Committee, said in response to a question from a reporter from the First Financial Daily that in the future, the supervision of Bitcoin trading platforms should be the responsibility of the central bank because it involves anti-money laundering, foreign exchange management and payment settlement.

During the two sessions, the price of Bitcoin fell slightly after reaching its historical high. Today, the international market price of one Bitcoin is $1,215, and the domestic market price is around 7,900 yuan.

At the beginning of this year, after the sharp fluctuations in Bitcoin prices, the central bank launched a round of regulatory storms against Bitcoin trading platforms.

In January, after the regulatory authorities in Beijing and Shanghai interviewed and inspected the three largest bitcoin trading platforms in the country, namely Bitcoin China, Huobi.com and OKCoin, the three platforms announced the suspension of bitcoin spot financing and coin lending.

On February 8, Beijing regulatory authorities again interviewed the main persons in charge of nine small Bitcoin trading platforms and informed them of the problems existing in the current Bitcoin trading platforms. Subsequently, these platforms successively announced the suspension of Bitcoin withdrawals, and three major Bitcoin trading platforms including BTC China also added restrictions on withdrawals.

Wu Xiaoling told reporters that the recent regulatory review by the central bank mainly reiterated that Bitcoin cannot be a channel for money laundering, and hoped that Bitcoin trading platforms would comply with the rules of the Anti-Money Laundering Law, foreign exchange trading rules and payment settlement rules. In addition, it is hoped that Bitcoin trading platforms will not become exchanges and will not adopt trading models such as matchmaking and bidding. She said that these Bitcoin trading platforms are also actively cooperating with the central bank in self-discipline inspections.

Although there are relatively few Bitcoin users in my country, the trading volume is the highest in the world. Since there is no transaction fee and leveraged financing and short selling services are provided, domestic trading platforms once accounted for more than 98% of the global Bitcoin trading volume.

As regulation has intensified, the volume of bitcoin transactions on domestic platforms has dropped sharply. In the past 24 hours, the total volume of transactions on three major domestic trading platforms, including Bitcoin China, was only 12,000, only one thousandth of the peak volume of 12 million at the beginning of the year.

Wu Xiaoling told reporters that Bitcoin can be said to be a relatively successful application of blockchain technology. Governments and regulatory authorities have different attitudes towards Bitcoin. my country certifies it as a digital asset, while some countries also regard it as an illegal currency issued by a decentralized system.

During the Two Sessions, Zhou Xuedong, a member of the National People's Congress and director of the Business Management Department of the People's Bank of China, suggested that domestic Bitcoin trading platforms should be tolerated and not banned for the time being, leaving a period of observation. However, in the short term, the regulatory red lines for Bitcoin trading platforms must be clarified and strict supervision must be implemented.

"In the long run, it is necessary to study and explore long-term regulatory mechanisms." Zhou Xuedong said that it is necessary to study the financial attributes and commodity attributes of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, study the nature of Bitcoin trading platforms, explore the introduction of national-level Bitcoin trading platform management pilot policies, and conduct licensing or filing pilots for a small number of qualified trading platforms. At the same time, strengthen the regulatory cooperation mechanism, strengthen industry self-discipline, and build a Bitcoin exchange integrity system.