Reuters - Binance will discontinue the use of the Chinese yuan on its peer-to-peer trading platform, the latest move by major global cryptocurrency exchanges to cut their ties with mainland Chinese investors after an intense crackdown on the sector.
Binance, one of the world's largest exchange by trading volumes, said in a Wednesday statement that it will remove the Chinese yuan sections from its consumer-to-consumer platform on 31 December this year, and mainland Chinese users will have their accounts switched to withdraw only mode China's most powerful regulators last month intensified crackdown on cryptocurrencies with blanket ban on all crypto transactions and mining, causing crypto exchanges and service providers scrambling to sever business relationships with mainland Chinese clients.
Binance has its origins in mainland China, though it emphasised in Wednesday's statement that it withdrew from China in 2017, the time of a previous regulatory crackdown.
Also on Wednesday, OKEX, another major cryptocurrency exchange with its origins in China, said in a statement that it had moved its core business to mainland China markets since 2017 and stopped marketing and providing services to the international market (Financial).
In its latest move, China added cryptocurrency mining to a draft list of industries in which investment is restricted or prohibited.