Skirting the Great Wall: The Chequered Saga of Crypto in China, 2018

In the aftermath of September 2017's historic ban on initial coin offerings, and the banishment of domestic crypto trading platforms, a resourceful crypto community was already showing signs of devising multiple means of circumventing the authorities' increasingly draconian actions.

Part two of Cointelegraph's three-part series continues to investigate the factors that catapulted China's regulators to redouble their efforts to curb the meteoric rise of crypto trades; their unprecedented actions to try to cut the country's crypto mining titans down to size; the response of China's tech triumvirate - Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu - to new constraints; and as ever, the proliferating means investors continue to use to scale an "Impregnable" anti-crypto wall.

Despite September's domestic exchange closures, analyses in January continued to include Bitcoin trading as a factor in capital outflows from China: an article January 6 suggested that the government's capital-control measures - which included subjecting yuan conversions to a quota - only further incentivized crypto trades.

Thomas Glucksmann, head of marketing at Hong Kong-based over-the-counter crypto trading desk Gatecoin, considered that "Lackluster equity performance, a potential real-estate bubble, yuan weakness, and capital controls are all driving Chinese demand for Bitcoin."

With an intensified crypto clampdown imminent, BTCC CEO Bobby Lee presciently noted that the government's intent to reduce trading by shuttering crypto exchanges would be a Pyrrhic victory: "They can't crack on Bitcoin itself," he said.

"To prevent financial risks, China will step up measures to remove any onshore or offshore platforms related to virtual currency trading or ICOs.".

Two days later, the prohibition against commercial venues from hosting crypto-related events was then extended to Guangzhou Development District, a special economic zone in southern China, close to Hong Kong.As a feverish August passed SCMP came out with a fresh report describing the resilience with which crypto traders continued to circumvent government restrictions.

The reporter also cited an industry research institute's monitoring of five of the most popular crypto trading platforms among Chinese investors - such as Binance and OKEx - during the first half of 2018.

As a cautionary tale, the reporter interviewed Liu Peng, an investor in the city of Tianjin, who related how he had himself used loophole mechanisms to access crypto trading platforms.

The forthcoming third part of Cointelegraph's crypto in China series will delve into the apparent paradoxes that govern the ownership, useability and legal protection of cryptocurrencies in the country, even as the official curtailment of trading has reached fever pitch.