On 24 September 2021 the People’s Bank of China and nine other agencies published a notice on “further preventing and disposing of risks from virtual-currency trading speculation”. Bitcoin, ether and tether, they said, are not legal tender and must not circulate as money. Fiat-crypto exchange, crypto-crypto matching, acting as a central counterparty, information and pricing services, token issuance, and derivatives are illegal financial activity. Overseas venues serving mainland residents over the internet are in the same bucket. Financial institutions and payment firms may not support the business.
China had banned ICOs and domestic exchanges years earlier. May’s State Council line on mining and trading is a different week — hashrate leaving, not this notice. Do not collapse them. People and keys still exist. A licensed on-ramp in Shanghai does not.
What happened
Ten departments, one document, a coordination mechanism, and a reminder that “we already said this” is now louder. Workers at overseas platforms who serve the mainland are in the enforcement story. Individuals holding coins are not the same as firms running order books. Headlines that say “China banned Bitcoin” skip that split.
Why it matters
If you live under this notice, the useful question is which company will still touch you, not whether the chain produces blocks. If you do not, this is someone else’s rulebook that can still move where hash and OTC sit. See how buying crypto actually works. See the May mining piece for the energy-and-machines chapter.
What happens next
More provincial enforcement, hashrate that already left staying left, and a long habit of treating every PBOC sentence as a global ban. Nothing here is an instruction to buy, sell, or hold, or to use an offshore venue.
