Cryptocurrency money laundering lands 1,100 in China Police Net

According to security officials, more than a thousand people have been jailed in China for using criminal proceeds to acquire cryptocurrencies, as part of a widening crackdown on the industry.

Despite the fact that trading in cryptocurrencies is prohibited in China, the country’s bitcoin mining fuel roughly 80% of worldwide transactions.

Officials have begun to keep a close check on cryptocurrency miners in order to avoid speculation and money laundering.

According to a statement released by the Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday, Chinese authorities broke a network of 1,100 persons involved in money laundering through purchasing cryptocurrencies.

The launderers charged clients fees to convert unlawful gains into virtual currencies via crypto exchanges, the ministry said, without defining the amount of money involved.

China prohibited trading in cryptocurrencies in 2019 and is rapidly tightening regulations on bitcoin mining.

In April, Inner Mongolia’s northern region shut down all of its cryptocurrency mining, stating that they had failed to satisfy yearly energy consumption goals.

The area provided 8% of the computer power required to run the global blockchain, which is a collection of online ledgers that records bitcoin transactions.

This is more than the whole amount of processing power dedicated to blockchain in US.

On Wednesday, the northern province of Qinghai imposed a similar ban on cryptocurrency mining, although no information about the extent of the activities in the region is known.

Bitcoin’s value plummeted in May as a result of Beijing’s warning to investors against speculative cryptocurrency trading.

China is enforcing a broad regulatory crackdown on the fintech industry, with the country’s top businesses facing huge fines after being found guilty of monopolistic tactics.