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<\/p>\nChina\u2019s stance toward decentralized cryptocurrency trading appears to be getting even tougher. Chinese journalist Colin Wu\u00a0and crypto news site 8BTCNews have both claimed that as of Wednesday, search results for some of the world\u2019s leading cryptocurrency exchanges are pulling up zero results.<\/p>\n
Cointelegraph\u2019s staff in China have themselves searched for cryptocurrency exchanges on the search engines and confirmed that results are inaccessible. However, a compound search such as \u201cBinance Academy\u201d or \u201cHuobi Research Center\u201d does still seem to be passing through the censors.<\/p>\n
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If the situation continues, this appears to be the latest step in Beijing\u2019s increasing censorship of cryptocurrency-related information via social media. On Monday,\u00a0Weibo \u2014 China\u2019s Twitter-like microblogging service with over 530 million monthly active users \u2014\u00a0suspended accounts belonging to multiple popular Bitcoin\u00a0(BTC) and crypto-related content creators.<\/p>\n
Colin Wu, or Wu Blockchain on Twitter, has noted that searches for Binance, Huobi and OKEx are not showing up for users of Baidu and Sogou, two major Chinese search engines. In addition, both Wu and 8BTCNews claim that Weibo has imposed the same black-out measures, with Wu noting that Zhihu \u2014 an analog to Quora \u2014 has also followed in step.<\/p>\n
Censorship measures form just a part of China\u2019s attempt to restrict various cryptocurrency activities, including mining and fundraising themes, deeming the latter illegal. Areas being targeted include\u00a0financial and payment institutions\u2019 provision of services related to cryptocurrency and token financing platforms that could be used as fiat-to-crypto gateways.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The crackdown on mining has focused on the government\u2019s concerns over the industry\u2019s carbon footprint, especially in areas such as Inner Mongolia. At least\u00a0three mining companies \u2014 BTC.TOP, Huobi and HashCow \u2014 have announced they would be\u00a0ceasing activities on the mainland.<\/p>\n
As of yet, representatives from the targeted exchanges have not made any public announcement regarding the apparent social media censorship measures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Binance could not provide comment on the situation but noted \u201cthat Binance does not currently hold exchange operations in China.\u201d<\/p>\n