In recent Chinese cryptocurrency news, while the FCoin drama keeps simmering, OKEx was experienced DDoS attacks, security issues centering on crypto exchanges once again rose to a talking point in the country; Bitcoin mining industry is walking out of the shadow of coronavirus as production has been resuming and Bitmain unveiled two bitcoin ASIC miners with max hashrate up to 110 TH/s; and debates on the approaching bitcoin halving become more intense in the community.

FCoin followup: founder’s family cornered in police station

Cryptocurrency exchange FCoin’s abrupt shutdown may have been one of the biggest failure stories in China’s crypto sector with 7,000-13,000 BTC unpaid, investors having put in millions of funds in the exchange are upset but have nowhere to complain as no one knows the whereabouts of FCoin founder Zhang Jian.

While a number of FCoin investors seems to clutch at a straw when they found out Zhang’s wife Li Yingying’s sister and parents who are allegedly about to leave the country with fake IDs. Over the past weekend, the vigilantes took the family to the local police station and called on more victims to provide evidence against the exchange.

Though Zhang resurfaced with fresh claims that he’s working actively on a restart plan and that his family who have no ties with the exchange shall not get involved (while his wife was the firm’s head of operations and marketing in 2018, she and her sister both have several house properties in the country’s first-tier cities). While desperate investors are not buying it saying what Zhang had done have already destroyed their family.

Small exchanges dying, OKEx and Bitfinex hit by DDoS attack

Following FCoin’s collapse, another China-based crypto exchange ZG.com was suspected of an exit scam as its platform token price was allegedly manipulated to drop almost to zero. According to statistics, around 40 crypto exchanges based in the country have exited or shut down overnight since 2019.

On Feb. 28, leading crypto exchange OKEx was targeted by Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The exchange’s CEO Jay Hao described the attack as “large-scale” but no users are affected. On the same day, Bitfinex was also subject to a DDoS attack and luckily, all funds remained safe and services have resumed soon.

Bitmain unveils 110TH/s S19 series, Bitcoin mining perks up

In the past week, Bitmain announced two of its latest S19 series with maximum hashrate up to 110 TH/s. That comes as a relief to the crypto mining industry after all the negative news that mining machine production/delivery is delayed by the coronavirus outbreak or fears of the bitcoin price drop.

Unlike bitcoin miners, Filecoin miners are miffed as the project has delayed again its mainnet launch date allegedly for the impact of coronavirus. That’s because many of them have been buying up and stockpiling mining rigs in anticipation of the mainnet launch. Now, they’re miffed that they have to wait even longer for their capital investments to pay back.

As cryptocurrency mining hardware makers like Bitmain are shaking off the coronavirus impact and gearing up for the upcoming bitcoin halving, Jiang Zhuoer, founder and CEO of crypto mining pool BTC.Top, joined the heated bitcoin halving debates and showed his great confidence in the bull run brought by the halving with a fresh claim that the upcoming bitcoin bull will be the last one we can predict and seize.

Digital yuan delayed, blockchain praised amid coronavirus

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has recently released the Financial Distributed Ledger Technology Security Specification (JR/T 0184—2020), which is also deemed as the first blockchain standard for the financial industry in the country. The standard came at a time when the country’s president Xi Jinping last October stressed the importance of stepping up research on the standardization of blockchain to increase China’s influence and rule-making power in the global arena.

As China is progressing smoothly in blockchain development as well as the digital yuan research, the outbreak of coronavirus at the start of the year has delayed the R&D of its national digital currency (DCEP) as work resumption was postponed in government institutions including the People’s Bank of China.

In the battle against the coronavirus, blockchain received special praise from China’s state-owned publication People’s Daily as the tech helped in the prevention and control of the epidemic. The article pointed out that blockchain has been used widely in the areas of donation tracking, supply-chain tracking, orderly production resume and financing, and urged to accelerate the development of such emerging technologies and industries brought by it.

Hong Kong plans to bring the cryptocurrency service industry under the regulatory framework, tightening policies concerning crypto and companies dealing with the crypto asset class.

Titbits of the week: Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, with $2.6 billion fortune, is the wealthiest of the crypto bunch in this year’s Hurun Rich List; the second-largest bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer Canaan is under the investigation of Los Angeles law firm Schall who said it is trying to get claims on behalf of investors of Canaan technology (NASDAQ: CAN) which is accused of violating securities laws. Binance hired a young, attractive woman, who is in a tit-for-tat war of words with a key account manager of the exchange’s competitor OKEx.